What to know about trends in murder, assault, rape and more
New York City is now in its fourth consecutive year of declining major crime following the pandemic-era surge. Murders in the first half of the year fell to 128 — the lowest count in history — 34 fewer than in 2025. Shootings dropped to 322 and major crime overall went down 5.6%. New York remains one of the safest large cities in America, and the improvements have been felt all across the city, almost without exception. Yet the same six months of successes also produced three developments that a headline might miss. One category of serious violence, felony assault, has now risen for six consecutive years. A second, rape, appears in the data to have risen sharply but, on closer inspection, has not risen at all. And many of the increases in the city’s crime statistics this year, particularly in the subway, do not necessarily reflect more crimes committed against New Yorkers, but rather heightened enforcement by the NYPD. This is an important distinction because some recorded offenses are as much a measure of police activity as of the underlying behavior. A rise in fare evasion complaints, for example, may reflect greater police attention to fare-beating rather than an actual increase in the activity itself.
The big picture: The city is safer than it was at this time last year
All categories of major crime except felony assault and rape declined in the first half of 2026. Murder was down 21%, burglary 15.2%, robbery 11.8% and car theft nearly 10%. Measured against 2019, the last year before the pandemic-era crime surge, murder was 12.9% lower and shootings were 11.3% lower. By these two measures of serious violence, the city is now safer than it was before the pandemic. But major crime is still 25% higher than it was prepandemic.
Crime counts are notoriously noisy, which is to say a small percentage drop in crime is often the result of one or two unusual months. But in New York so far in 2026, this has not been the case. These declines have been consistent across the first six months, with every month seeing less crime than the year before.
The decline is also picking up speed. Major crime fell 5.6% in the first half of 2026, compared with a 4% decline at the same point last year and a 0.7% decline the year before. Murder shows the clearest improvement, down 21% after declines of 14.7% and 7.8% at the two preceding midyears. Burglary fell 15.2% after barely changing a year ago. Even crimes that are still increasing are rising more slowly: Rape rose 6.9%, compared with rises of 21.8% and 11.9% in the prior two years, and felony assault rose just 0.4%, compared with rises of 1.2% and 7.6%. The pattern is not uniform: Robbery, grand larceny and car theft each posted stronger declines earlier in the postpandemic recovery. But taken together, major crime is falling at its fastest pace since the pandemic-era surge.
Six years on, New York has recovered from lethal violence and little else
As rosy as the numbers may be when compared with 2025, they look less favorable when compared to 2019. Murders and shootings are the only two categories that have fallen below their prepandemic levels. Every other major crime remains above where it stood in 2019: robbery by 8.6%, burglary by 8.6%, grand larceny by 8.2%, felony assault by 48%, car theft by 171% and rape by 19.5% (more on this number, which is complicated by definitional changes, in a moment). Taken together, major crime is still 25.5% higher than it was in 2019. In other words, New York City has recovered from lethal violence, but it has not yet recovered from the rest.
Converted into the rhythm of an ordinary day, this city of 8.6 million averaged about 0.7 murders, 1.8 shootings, six rapes, 30 car thefts, 36 robberies, 82 felony assaults and 120 grand larcenies every 24 hours in the first half of 2026. Two of those figures are lower than they were in 2019. The other five are not.
New York City’s murder decline is real, but it is smaller than those recorded in comparable jurisdictions
Measured over 12 months against 2019, murders across all reporting jurisdictions in the United States are down 21% and 33% across the Northeast. New York City’s total is down 10%, behind essentially every regional and national benchmark available. Six years on, this city has recovered less ground than almost any of its peers.
The first half of 2026 stands out within New York City’s own recovery. Murders fell 21% from the same period last year, the steepest midyear decline since murders began falling after the pandemic-era surge. That improvement came after several consecutive years of declines, making the first six months of 2026 particularly strong by the city’s recent standards.
But New York’s longer-term decline in murder is not unusual among large American cities. Murders began falling after 2022 in cities with very different policing strategies, prosecutors, budgets and political environments. Some cities have experienced even larger declines than New York. So two things can be true at once: 2026 has been an exceptionally good year for murder reduction in New York City, while New York’s broader recovery has lagged that of its peers.
The Bronx improved the most, but most of the improvement was in property crime
The decline was not evenly spread across the city. Major crime fell 11.5% in the Bronx, 6.2% in Manhattan and 5.2% in Brooklyn, while Queens and Staten Island barely moved at all. The Bronx accounted for roughly half of the entire citywide reduction despite being home to about a sixth of the city’s population.
That progress should be read against where the borough started. Even after the largest decline of any borough, the Bronx still records more major crime per resident than anywhere else in the city.
Most of the 1,757 fewer major crimes recorded in the Bronx this year were property crimes. Grand larceny accounted for 619 fewer crimes, a 13.7% decline; car theft accounted for another 583, down 26.5%; and burglary fell by 160, or 11%. Together, those three offenses accounted for more than three-quarters of the borough’s overall reduction. Robbery also declined. Felony assault, however, barely moved, falling by less than 1%, compared with a 0.4% increase across the rest of the city.
That distinction matters especially in the Bronx, which has long had the city’s highest violent crime rate and which saw an especially stark pandemic-era rise. So while major crime has fallen meaningfully there, the topline decline masks an uneven recovery: Property crime is down substantially, while less progress has been shown on violence.
Notably, the NYPD recently reorganized the borough: In February, Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced that Patrol Borough Bronx would be divided, and on May 20, the two new commands launched. Each command now has its own homicide squad, evidence collection team, narcotics unit, auto crime unit and Neighborhood Safety Team, giving the Bronx the specialized capacity the other boroughs have had for years. The two commands together were given nearly 200 additional officers. How this reorganization affects crime rates will be worth watching through the end of the year and into 2027.
On paper, two major crimes rose, but one of those increases gets an asterisk
For the sixth consecutive year, felony assaults rose. The NYPD recorded 14,802 felony assault complaints in the first half of 2026, up 0.4% from last year, and 48% above prepandemic levels.
Mapped by precinct, 41 of the city’s 78 precincts recorded more felony assaults than a year ago, while 37 recorded fewer or the same. The exception is the 20th Precinct, which covers the Upper West Side from West 59th Street to West 86th Street and went from 32 felony assaults to 67. That is the largest increase in the city in percentage terms and the sixth largest in complaints added, in a precinct that otherwise ranks 72nd of 78 on volume. The total citywide increase was 57 complaints — and 35 of them were recorded in the 20th Precinct.
The complaints’ locations might give insight into the reason for the increase. Of the 35 additional felony assaults, 14 were recorded at homeless shelters, which recorded none at all in the first half of 2025, and 14 were on the street, up from six. Five were at public schools and four in the subway, neither of which recorded any felony assaults the year before, while complaints in apartment buildings and in public housing both fell.
Because felony assault has climbed while nearly every other major crime type has fallen, it now occupies a share of New York’s felony crime that it has never occupied before. In the first half of 2006, it comprised 8,214 of 82,242 felony complaints, or 1 in 10. In the first half of 2026, it accounted for 14,802 of 88,009, or about 1 in 6. Over the same 20 years, it moved from the 10th most common offense category the NYPD records to the sixth.
The other increase, rape, reflects a change in the law rather than in behavior
At first glance, it looks like rape has increased significantly in the first half of the year, up about 20% compared to 2025. Taken at face value, that is a serious deterioration in a city seeing declines in most other major crimes. However, these numbers don’t represent additional victims, but rather a reclassification of penal law.On Sept. 1, 2024, New York’s expanded rape definition took effect, bringing oral and anal conduct within the statutory definition of rape. That conduct had always been a felony, but previously, it had been charged as a criminal sexual act, and under an older statutory label of sodomy.
After 2024, sodomy complaints almost disappeared, with a corresponding increase in rape complaints. This is what one would expect to happen, as those sodomy cases were redefined as rape. Another way to understand this change is to look at male victims. Under the old statute, being a male victim of rape was close to a definitional impossibility, but men now account for around 10% of rape cases.Overall, if we combine rape complaints and sodomy cases, they are actually down by 5.2% since 2019, and have stayed near steady since 2024. Meanwhile, sexual abuse complaints, which the 2024 change did not touch, were at 2,420 in the first half of 2019 and 2,445 this year. This all strongly suggests that the number of rapes has not actually increased in New York City. What has changed, rather, is what is legally defined as rape.
One potential explanation that some have put forward for the increase in rape — that more people are reporting incidents from prior years — does not hold water. The share of complaints filed a year or more after the incident was 17.7% in 2019 and is 16.2% now, and the percentage of rapes reported in a week after they happened has not meaningfully changed.
Total crime is near a 20-year high, and the growth is split between what New Yorkers report and what the NYPD initiates
The seven major felonies receive the most attention in crime reporting, and they make up the national index because they represent the most serious violent and property crimes. But by volume, they represent a relatively small share of the crimes experienced by New Yorkers: They account for only about one-fifth of all crime reported in the city. The NYPD recorded 279,513 complaints of all kinds in the first half of 2026, of which roughly 55,000 were major crimes. Total complaints fell 3.2% in the first half of this year, from 288,617 over the same period in 2025. But they remain 25.5% above the first half of 2019 and 8% above the first half of 2006.
Complaints are up 25.5% since 2019, an increase of 56,807 offenses. That growth reflects two very different things. About 40% of that increase came from offenses that are heavily shaped by police enforcement rather than reports from victims or witnesses. Vehicle and traffic offenses alone rose 342%, from 3,218 to 14,224 complaints, accounting for roughly one-fifth of the total increase (nearly all of that growth sits in a single unlabeled misdemeanor category that barely existed before July 2022, the month the City announced its crackdown on illegal and forged license plates). Fare evasion, drug offenses and offenses involving interference with police or other government activity, such as resisting arrest or obstructing governmental administration, account for much of the rest.
The remaining 60% of the increase came from crimes reported by victims or witnesses, including 8,072 additional harassment complaints and 7,501 additional petit larceny complaints. That is the portion of the increase that more closely reflects what New Yorkers are experiencing in their daily lives, rather than changes in how intensively police are enforcing the law.
Compared to last year, 11 of the 15 largest offense categories recorded fewer complaints than in 2025. The four that rose were vehicle and traffic offenses, up 8.9%, offenses against public administration, up 7.7%, harassment, up 1.3%, and felony assault, up 0.4%.
Serious crime in the subway is rare and falling. Enforcement there has nearly tripled since 2019.
Relative to the number of riders, serious crime in the subway is rare. There were 1,071 major felonies in the first half of the year across nearly 650 million rides, which works out to fewer than two for every million rides.
Counts of major crime in the subway also fell by 2.2% compared to the same period last year. Grand larceny — which in the subway mostly means phones snatched from riders’ hands and wallets and bags lifted in a crowded car — is the most common major crime on the subway and fueled the decrease, down almost 10% from last year. Violent crimes, robbery and felony assault increased in the first half of the year by about 7%.
Compared with prepandemic 2019, the total count of major crime in the system is down nearly 8%. However, this does not take into account the reduction in ridership. Per million rides, subway crime is still about 20% higher than it was in 2019. There is less crime in the system than before the pandemic but more of it per rider.
All crime in the subway, counting felonies, misdemeanors and violations together, fell 4.3% this year, from 17,945 complaints to 17,180. Fare evasion complaints fell 11.5%, administrative code violations 12.8% and weapons offenses 14%, while drug offenses rose 28%, criminal trespass 29% and offenses against public administration 24%. Misdemeanor assault, which improved this year above ground, rose 15.9%.
Compared to 2019, subway complaints are up 178.5%, from 6,168 to 17,180. Almost the entire difference sits in a handful of categories that exist because an officer stopped someone rather than because a rider reported something. Fare evasion complaints ballooned to 6,594 in the first half of 2026. Violations of the city administrative code, which covers offenses like unlicensed vending and open containers, went from 1 to 1,882. Drug offenses rose 451%, and criminal trespassing increased from 12 complaints to 480. Weapons offenses, chiefly knives turned up during a stop or a bag search, rose 285%. And offenses against public administration rose 633%. Crimes in that category include resisting arrest, obstructing an officer or giving a false name, none of which can happen unless an officer has already stopped someone.
Take those categories out and the same system recorded 5,548 complaints in 2019 and 4,945 this year, a decline of 10.9%.
Criminal court summonses hit an eight-year high, and nearly half the increase was due to transit rules
A criminal court summons is what an officer issues instead of making an arrest for a low-level offense, ordering the person to appear in court. Such offenses include drinking in public, disorderly conduct, being in a park after hours, breaking transit rules. The NYPD issued 58,415 criminal court summonses in the first half of 2026, the highest first-half total in the eight years of available data and 31.5% above the 44,412 issued in the first half of 2019.
The increase was largely driven by subway enforcement. Summonses for transit rule violations nearly doubled, from 2,489 to 4,907, and that single category accounts for 46% of the entire citywide rise in criminal court summonses this year. These are offenses such as smoking in a station, disobeying subway signs and breaking other transit rules.
The Knicks won their first title in 53 years, and felony assaults rose 31% on the nights they played
Vital City has reported several times on the increase in felony assault, the one major crime that keeps increasing year after year. In June, the city ran something close to an experiment on it.
The Knicks reached the NBA Finals and beat the Spurs in five games, winning their first championship since 1973. On these five nights, all of them with tipoff at 8 p.m. or later, a very large number of New Yorkers did the same thing at the same time: watch basketball and party. To see what that did to crime, we compared each Finals night against the same weekday one week earlier and one week later, and against the same date a year before, counting complaints between 7 p.m. and 4 a.m.
The shape of the night is the most convincing part. While the games were on, crime fell: Complaints were down 9% at 7 p.m., 9.4% at 8 and 11.1% at 9. Then the games ended. Complaints ran 4.8% above normal at 10 p.m., 8.2% at 11 p.m., 16.9% at midnight and 38.7% at 1 a.m., before falling back below normal by 3 a.m.. Conclusion: A city watching basketball is a city not doing much else (and committing less crime). A city leaving bars and partying in the streets is another matter.
Across the whole window, total complaints barely moved, averaging 617 on a Finals night and 603 on a comparable night, a difference of 2.3%. But violent crime, specifically felony assaults, did jump — and jump substantially.
Misdemeanor assault rose 9.2% and robbery 8.3%. Felony assault rose 31.4%, from 38.5 complaints on an ordinary night to 50.6.
The increase in felony assaults happened on every game night — weekdays or weekends, home or away, victory or loss. Wednesdays, which hosted Games 1 and 4, ran 22.3% above their ordinary counterparts. Friday, Game 2, was 35.1% higher. Saturday, the night the Knicks clinched the title, was up 31%. The largest increase of all, 49.9%, came on the Monday of Game 3, which the Knicks lost. Winning a championship and losing a game both produced the same effect, which argues that this is about a lot of people being out late together rather than about celebration.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence that the games had an effect on violent crime was the fact that most of the increase was in Manhattan, where Madison Square Garden, the outdoor watch parties and many of the bars where people watched the games are located. Felony assault was up 108.5% in Manhattan, 32% in Brooklyn, 26% on Staten Island and 10.8% in Queens; in the Bronx, it fell 0.8%.
An additional 12 felony assaults a night on each of five nights adds up to about 60 complaints. The city’s entire year-over-year increase in felony assault, across all six months and all 78 precincts, was 57. Put differently, five basketball games moved the same quantity of violence that separates this year from last.
