Shootings, murders and robberies fell in New York City last year, continuing a generally steep drop in crime rates even as the number of reported rapes rose, Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch said on Tuesday.
Murders in New York fell more than 20 percent, from 382 in 2024 to 305 last year, Ms. Tisch said during a news conference with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul, a trend that has been reflected in other large U.S. cities following the pandemic.
The decline in murders occurred amid a 3 percent drop in major crime and a sharp decrease in the number of people shot in the city, which fell from 1,103 in 2024 to 856 in 2025, Ms. Tisch said.
The number of reported rapes, however, increased by 16 percent, from 1,767 in 2024 to 2,049 in 2025, a rise that officials attributed in part to a change in a state law that broadened the definition of sexual assault. (The definition now includes additional forms of nonconsensual, forced sexual conduct.)
The number of felony assaults — crimes in which a dangerous weapon is used, a city worker or a person age 65 or older is attacked, or someone is seriously injured — increased slightly, from 29,684 to 29,792.
The number of shootings fell to the lowest level since 1994, when the Police Department began using its current method of collecting and recording crime data. Ms. Tisch credited the decline to a strategy that deployed “an unprecedented number of officers” to patrol areas at night where crime had been high, including in public housing complexes and the subway system. Both areas saw a 4 percent decrease in major crimes last year compared with 2024.
“These numbers describe an agency that’s firing on all cylinders,” she said.
Mr. Mamdani, who during his campaign apologized for having once called New York police officers “racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety,” thanked the department’s rank and file on Tuesday “for the work that you all do in making today possible.”
The falling crime numbers were “a testament to a Police Department that cares about this city and works with this city to remake this city,” he said. “I want to see these numbers continue to drop, to continue to nurture the partnership between the N.Y.P.D. and the communities across this city.”
Tuesday was the first time that Ms. Tisch and Mr. Mamdani appeared together at a news conference. It was held at One Police Plaza in Manhattan, where Eric Adams, a retired police captain and Mr. Mamdani’s predecessor, appeared frequently during his tenure.
The drop in crime came during Mr. Adams’s final year in office and set a base line for Mr. Mamdani, who will be judged on whether the crime rate continues to fall under his watch.
Neither Ms. Tisch nor Mr. Mamdani mentioned the former mayor. But Ms. Tisch, who was appointed by Mr. Adams in late 2024, appeared to refer to the upheaval during his tenure, when two police commissioners were investigated by the F.B.I. and the department’s top uniformed officer was accused of demanding sex in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime.
“The results that I have just described are extraordinary on their own,” Ms. Tisch said. “They are even more extraordinary when you reflect on where this department stood just a year ago, a crisis of leadership, a department plagued by scandal at the top and public confidence deeply shaken.”
Nearly 100 people, including reporters, photographers, members of the department’s executive staff, and aides to the commissioner, the mayor and Governor Hochul, packed the press room on Tuesday.
“What a turnout,” Ms. Tisch said as she took the podium to recite the statistics, an annual event that drew more interest than usual because of Mr. Mamdani, who once talked about eliminating the department’s overtime budget and a unit known as the Strategic Response Group that responds to protests.
During his campaign, Mr. Mamdani proposed a 17-page public safety plan, which included the creation of a city agency called the Department of Community Safety. The new agency would focus on expanding violence-interrupter programs and shift certain 911 calls away from the police and instead toward mental health crisis teams.
Mr. Mamdani has said he would take a different approach to public safety than Mr. Adams, who embraced aggressive tactics and who saw a rise in misconduct and use-of-force complaints under his administration.
On Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani and Ms. Tisch were asked what they would change about the Police Department’s approach to public safety.
“The crime-fighting strategy in New York City is working,” Ms. Tisch said. “At this time, there’s no change planned to a crime-fighting strategy that has delivered stellar results.”
Mr. Mamdani did not directly answer the question but said he had retained Ms. Tisch as commissioner because of the decrease in crime and her changes to the “upper echelons” of the department.
He said that the Department of Community Safety would be “supplementing” the Police Department, not “supplanting” it.
Christopher Herrmann, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former Police Department crime analyst, said the city’s drop in crime had occurred as most other large cities in the country saw a similar downturn in shootings and murders since the pandemic, when the economy crumbled and crime spiked. The number of homicides fell 29 percent between 2024 and 2025 in Chicago and about 10 percent in Los Angeles, according to public data.
Mr. Herrmann said he expected this trend to continue.
“Crime is like moving a big ship,” he said. “It happens slowly. My gut tells me it’s going to keep on going down before leveling off. We haven’t hit the floor yet.”
Maria Cramer is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and crime in the city and surrounding areas.
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