By Thomas Tracy
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — The number of shootings and homicides in the city dropped to record lows over the first five months of the year — down to levels not seen in more than three decades, NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Tuesday.
Last month was also the safest May the city has ever seen, with shootings and homicides not this low in May since the CompStat era began in 1994, Tisch said.
“The NYPD’s work in May was exceptional and the results were historic, making 2025 so far the safest year on record for both shootings and murders,” Tisch said at City Hall with Mayor Eric Adams while surrounded by some of the 22,000 firearms seized by police over the last three and a half years.
According to NYPD statistics, there were 54 shootings and 18 murders in May, a new record low. The month — which also boasted the safest Memorial Day weekend on record in the CompStat era — capped off a successful five straight months of declines in violence. (CompStat refers to “computer statistics.”)
Through May 31 , cops had investigated 112 murders, a 28% drop from last year, with 44 fewer killings. Cops also recorded 264 shootings, 70 fewer than this time last year, or a drop of about 20%
Murders and shootings so far this year have been lower than pre-pandemic levels. The previous record low for murders in the first five months of the year was in both 2014 and 2017, when cops investigated 113 killings each year. The previous record low for shootings was in 2018, when cops investigated 267.
“We’ve promised to eradicate gun violence and we are working on that promise,” Adams said.
Tisch credited the huge crime drops in May to the NYPD’s Summer Violence Reduction Plan. Beginning on May 5 , the NYPD identified 70 high-crime areas in 57 precincts throughout the city and flooded those areas with more than 1,500 uniformed officers at the times the violence occurs.
As a result, crime in the zones during the times additional cops were added has fallen by 28%, Tisch said. Shootings in those areas are down by 65%, with some traditionally crime-prone precincts — like the 44th Precinct in the Bronx , where Yankee Stadium stands — not seeing a single shooting in May.
“Our bold, aggressive, data-driven, summer-reduction plan focuses every single day on one thing — public safety,” Tisch said. “Our scalpel approach to crime fighting works.”
As of June 1 , overall crime in the city had fallen by 6%, from 50,349 felony crimes this time last year to 47,258, officials said.
The only crime category to see an uptick was in rapes, which jumped by 27%, up from 645 incidents reported last year to 820. The NYPD said this year’s rise is in part attributed to legislative changes made last September that broadened the legal definition of rape in New York state , which now includes additional forms of sexual assault.
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