Gun violence is way down; assaults and other forms of violence are not. What’s next?
New York City recorded fewer than 700 shootings in 2025, the lowest total since the NYPD began tracking the statistic. For a city that saw nearly 2,000 shooting victims in 2021, the turnaround is striking: 1,020 fewer people shot in four years.
What’s going on, and how does that progress compare to what’s happening with other crimes? Chief of Department Michael LiPetri, who oversees the Department’s crime strategies, sat down with Vital City to walk through the mechanics: hyperlocal “violence reduction zones” where shootings, shots fired and street robberies overlap; thousands of officers deployed on foot during peak hours; and narcotics and gang enforcement concentrated in the same tight geography.
As Vital City makes clear in its year-end crime report, the picture isn’t uniformly rosy. Assaults have risen stubbornly since 2020. Juvenile involvement in gun violence hit its highest recorded percentage. And the Bronx, despite leading the city in shooting reductions, still demands disproportionate resources.
LiPetri explains what the data show, what they don’t and where the Department is quietly reassessing its approach under Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
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Vital City: The NYPD had a banner year on shootings and murders. Can you put that in historic perspective and explain what you think the main drivers have been?
Michael LiPetri: It’s amazing. I sat in this office as commanding officer of the Chief of Department’s Office during our previous banner years — 2017, 2018 and 2019. So to say that we’re now under 700 shootings in New York City, especially after what transpired in the summer of 2020, is incredible. The credit goes to the men and women out there.
We focused on very small areas with a high propensity for violence. When we overlaid shooting incidents, shots fired and street robberies, we saw they lie on top of each other regardless of precinct or borough boundaries. The No. 1 crime strategy is field deployment. We put thousands of officers in those areas on foot patrol at the right times. Officers coming out of the academy don’t have weekends off their first year or year-and-a-half — they’re all working Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. We reached maximum force figures during those long summer nights, and the momentum continued through the fourth quarter.
Four out of five geographic boroughs had a 25% reduction in shootings. Brooklyn had a 15% reduction only because we broke the record the year before and then broke it again. In South Jamaica, Queens — the 103rd, 105th, 113th and 115th precincts — there were 23 shootings in 2025 compared to 51 in 2024.
But field deployment was only part of it. We focused narcotics enforcement within the violence reduction zones. Every week, I got a report on what percentage of narcotics arrests were within those zones. We asked our field intelligence officers to provide intelligence on recidivists, parolees and modus operandi for officers on foot posts. We asked our gun violence suppression division to focus in these areas. Housing developments within the zones were part of it; transit lines and stations within the zones were part of it. It was a force multiplier.
This is the fifth year in a row we’ve been over 3,000 gun arrests. Prosecution has never been better. We share more data with the DA’s offices than ever before. I give them all our zone maps and say, “This is where we’re focused — you need to be focused here also.”
Vital City: Over the decades, we’ve seen remarkable reductions, but traditionally, violence has concentrated in the same places. Are you seeing geographic areas change? And what’s the nexus between narcotics enforcement and violence?
LiPetri: We are focused on trigger pullers and robbery recidivists. With the data mining and automation we can do, if someone is a suspect in two different shooting incidents, we know that. My thing has always been: If this person has been around gun violence twice in six months as a suspect, you really need to look at them.
That’s why the criminal group database is so important. If I’m looking at a crew with 20 members in the database, I can see how many are incarcerated, how many are out, how many shooting incidents they’ve been involved in as suspect, victim or perpetrator. I might see a crew involved in 27 violent incidents in the past year and say we need to focus our resources there.
Vital City: Can you explain the linkage between today’s victim being tomorrow’s shooter?
LiPetri: Approximately 65% to 70% of our shootings have a gang or crew nexus. Retaliation is highly likely. When we identify which crew member was shot or perpetrated a crime, we look at which crews are aligned with them and who their adversaries are. We overlay that with housing developments or small pockets they might frequent. The field deployment is built into all of this.
We document the specific method of flight for every geographic borough. I can look at a shooting and know whether they’re using Citi Bikes, vehicles or walking between developments. All this intelligence is shared with officers every night. CompStat in 32 years hasn’t changed that much — what’s changed is our analytical ability to get granular by embedding civilian data scientists with experienced law enforcement professionals.
Vital City: There’s been this incredible achievement in murders and shootings, but assaults have been rising. What’s fueling that?
LiPetri: Assaults have been stubborn, rising year over year since 2020. Last year was driven by three categories: assaults on NYPD officers, up 53; assaults on other public servants like conductors, correction officers and nurses, up 104; and domestic violence victims, up over 350.
On domestic violence, we made some decisions. We were having trouble with complainants becoming uncooperative, and victims were speaking to many different officers — the domestic violence unit, the patrol officer, then a detective. So we put it all under the detective bureau. The same person who catches the case deals with the victim and advocates. We’re already seeing results. We also ramped up our warrants teams to focus on misdemeanor domestic violence, not just felonies.
Vital City: Domestic violence often involves an escalating scale of behavior that may end in homicide. How do you think about anticipating that?
LiPetri: That’s why we have high-propensity lists and top 10 offenders within each precinct and housing PSA. A good, seasoned investigator knows the questions to ask. They can look at a victim and see they were a victim of harassment a month ago and ask follow-up questions. They have access to the whole case folder and can identify individuals with multiple incidents — sometimes with different victims but the same perpetrator.
Vital City: What do you make of the reported increase in mental illness associated with these attacks? And how will the new Department of Community Safety work?
LiPetri: I can’t speak to the mayor’s community safety plan — I haven’t been briefed. But on unprovoked assaults, we absolutely tie a high percentage of those offenders to prior mental illness contact with the NYPD. The data shows that.
But here’s something I don’t think I’ve been asked: We had 250 fewer people shot than in 2024 and 1,020 fewer shooting victims than in 2021 — from 1,876 to 856. How many lifelong injuries prevented? How many deaths? And we were down over 500 stabbing and slashing victims. The violent crime picture is incredible.
Vital City: Let’s talk more about stabbings and slashings. How do you see that trajectory?
LiPetri: We’ve never had more cutting instrument recoveries. We’ve focused on transit — recovering cutting instruments during enforcement or when someone’s arrested for something else and is found in possession. We know 80% of transit crime is on trains and platforms, and we’ve really increased enforcement there.
Vital City: Lightning round. First, the aging of the offender population — violence used to be a young man’s game, but now we’re seeing it clustered in people’s 30s. Second, what’s interesting that no one would know from looking at CompStat? Third, what’s going on with the Bronx?
LiPetri: The Bronx led the city with 86 fewer shooting incidents — a 25% decrease. We’ve put enormous resources there across detective bureau, transit, housing and patrol. We’re taking a hard look at some things we’re not ready to announce yet.
On juvenile crime: Last year was the highest percentage of shooting victims under 18, shooting perpetrators under 18 and juveniles arrested in possession of a gun. We started tracking this about eight years ago and have never seen it this high. In September, at my direction, we focused on school zones before and after dismissal. We’ve seen a sharp decrease in violent crime in those school cars citywide.