NYC murder count revisiting old lows

Donald Trump and his loyal army of right-wing blowhards like to scream, as he did back in 2023, that “MURDERS & VIOLENT CRIME HIT UNIMAGINABLE RECORDS!” in New York City.  Of course he had a particular interest in making that claim—he was being prosecuted by both state and city back then, and he thought false claims about violent crimes would me him look innocent and prosecutors look unfairly obsessed. But despite being fictitious, this sort of bloviating did have broader unfortunate effects, scaring suburbanites and winning votes for right-wing politicians in and around the city.

Actual statistics from the NYPD tell a different story: the pandemic surgelette has largely been reversed, and the murder rate in particular is revisiting old lows. Here’s the story in a picture:

Connoisseurs of crime stats recommend looking at the murder rate as the best measure of serious offenses. Victim reports of other kinds of crime can vary with time, as can police classification of those reports. Murders are generally very well reported and there’s much less room for classification errors: a corpse has an evidentiary status that a missing wallet lacks.

As the graph shows, 2024’s body count of 382 was the lowest since 2019’s 319, and is well below 2012’s 419. And it’s down 83% from 1990’s peak of 2,262. Recent numbers are far from “UNIMAGINABLE”—one can imagine nearly anything—but they’re certainly nowhere near a RECORD!

We’re only a couple of months into 2025, but the stats so far this year are looking even better: murders are down 25% from the same period last year (ending March 2, to be precise). If this trend holds for the rest of the year—a big if, for sure—there will be 288 murders, which would be the lowest annual death toll since 1951.

Let’s see if this enters The Discourse.