The number of murders, and overall crimes, is dropping dramatically since Trump took office the second time.
Axios reports:
The U.S. is on pace for the largest one-year drop in murders the nation has ever recorded, according to an analysis by crime stats expert Jeff Asher.The big picture: The decline in killings is part of a broader decrease in violent crime following the COVID-era spike. Mass killings in the U.S. also fell in 2025, reaching their lowest level since 2006.
- The Real-Time Crime Index, which compiles data from 570 law enforcement agencies, shows a nearly a 20% decline in murders this year compared with the same period in 2024.
- The database, which Asher used in his analysis, does not consider manslaughter, self-defense, negligence, or “accidental killings” for the statistics, according to its online glossary.
- The database’s statistics are currently available through October. The FBI will not release official 2025 violent crime data until sometime next year, though RTCI estimates have historically tracked closely with federal figures.
- Other major crime categories measured by the index were also down nationwide and across locations of all population sizes, including motor vehicle thefts (23.2%), aggravated assaults (7.5%) and robbery (18.3%).
By the numbers: New York City and Memphis recorded nearly a 20% drop in murders compared with 2024, and Chicago saw them fall almost 28%.
- New Orleans saw a decline of 7.5%, while Los Angeles County recorded murders dropping by nearly 19%.
From Jeff Asher’s analysis:
The number of crimes reported to law enforcement agencies almost certainly fell at a historic clip in 2025 led by the largest one-year drop in murder ever recorded — the third straight year setting a new record — and sizable drops in reported violent and property crime. This assessment will not be confirmed until the FBI releases formal estimates for 2025 sometime in the second half of next year, but it is based on a variety of sources all saying the same thing.My main source for the assessment is the Real-Time Crime Index, a collection of monthly crime data from hundreds of agencies nationwide. The most recent RTCI sample consists of 570 law enforcement agencies with reporting through October 2025. The sample covers around 115 million people and historically has accounted for around half of the murders in the United States in a given year.The drop in crime in 2025 continues a trend that began in 2023, accelerated in 2024, and likely became historic in 2025. A roughly 20 percent drop in murder in 2025, as is suggested by the current data, would be by far the largest decline ever recorded, eclipsing the decline in 2024 — currently pegged at -15 percent by the FBI but that’s subject to a likely upward revision next year.Other types of crime are seeing large reported declines as well. These drops range from a nearly 23 percent decline in motor vehicle thefts in the RTCI to a smaller 9 and 8 percent drop in theft and aggravated assault respectively according to the RTCI. These numbers won’t be finalized for a while, but they paint the picture of large drops in crime even if the current numbers potentially overstate that drop by a small bit.
Over 12,000 lives have been saved according to Asher:
Overall, there were likely around 12,000 fewer people murdered in the United States in 2024 and 2025 than in 2020 and 2021. That is tremendous progress that should be celebrated while acknowledging that 14,000 or so murders this year in the United States is still far too many.Other crime types almost certainly fell at or near historic rates in 2025 as well.Overall violent crime is down more than 10 percent in the RTCI sample through October while overall property crime is down more than 12 percent. Applying these declines, even conservatively, to the FBI’s crime rates since 1960 suggests the US in 2025 likely had the lowest reported murder and property crime rates ever recorded by the FBI and the lowest violent crime rate since the late 1960s.
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