Which U.S. cities saw the biggest year-over-year change in homicide rate between 2024 and 2025?
Executive summary
The clearest, repeatedly reported pattern for 2024→2025 is a substantial net decline in homicides across many U.S. cities — analysts and aggregated indexes put the national drop roughly around 17–20% through mid‑2025 — but the biggest year‑over‑year swings are city‑specific and reported differently by different trackers (partial‑year vs. full‑year) [1] [2] [3]. Among named cities, the largest documented decreases in 2025 versus 2024 include Birmingham (≈‑49%), Baltimore (≈‑30.9%), and Atlanta (≈‑26.2%), while isolated reports and surveys flag some cities bucking the trend with increases in parts of 2025 [4] [5].
1. The headline: big, uneven declines in 2025 that dwarf prior single‑year moves
Multiple aggregate trackers and analysts reported that homicides fell markedly in 2025 compared with 2024 — the Council on Criminal Justice found that in 30 reporting cities the homicide rate in the first half of 2025 was about 17% lower than the same period in 2024, representing 327 fewer homicides in the sample [1], and crime analyst Jeff Asher and others described roughly a 19–20% national drop in 2025 compared to 2024 [2] [3]. These large, concentrated declines mean that the biggest year‑over‑year changes are notable decreases rather than widespread increases, but the magnitude and which cities top the list depend heavily on source, timeframe, and whether data are partial or year‑end [1] [6].
2. Cities with the largest reported drops — Birmingham, Baltimore, Atlanta
The most specific, widely cited single‑city figures come from aggregated reporting of the Real‑Time Crime Index and analysts: Birmingham, Alabama, is singled out for a roughly 49% drop in murders from 2024 to 2025; Baltimore is reported to have fallen about 30.9%; and Atlanta about 26.2% — figures that, if accurate and measured on the same basis, represent among the largest year‑over‑year declines documented in national reporting [4]. These same reports emphasize that some of those gains trace to targeted local policing, federal partnerships, and statistical variation in smaller jurisdictions, and that interpretations differ across local officials and national commentators [4] [2].
3. Other big movers mentioned in media and industry summaries
Beyond those three, industry compilations and data aggregators highlight large reductions in many places — for example, one aggregator claimed Denver saw a 45% reduction in homicides in 2025 versus 2024, and broader studies report that 17–18 of analyzed cities posted declines in 2025 — but these claims come from non‑uniform datasets and vary in rigor [7]. The Council on Criminal Justice’s mid‑year report stresses that the 17% average decline across 30 cities masks wide heterogeneity: some months and cities saw sharper drops while others declined modestly or even rose [1].
4. Pockets of increase and why they complicate a simple “biggest change” list
Not every city fell — preliminary MCCA and local reports describe increases in homicides or violent crime in a few jurisdictions in 2025 (Fox News summarizing MCCA cited cities such as Omaha and localized upticks in Atlanta for certain violent‑crime categories), underscoring that short‑window surveys can surface increases that full‑year aggregates later absorb or overturn [5]. Similarly, reports warn that media lists and maps sometimes rely on county proxies or incomplete 2024 data, which can skew calculated year‑over‑year percent changes if city boundaries or reporting cutoffs differ [8] [9].
5. Data caveats and how to interpret “biggest year‑over‑year change”
All national and city comparisons depend on definitions (homicide counts vs. per‑100k rates), time windows (first half vs. full year), and data completeness; multiple sources explicitly note incomplete 2024 figures for some cities and differences in city vs. county reporting [8] [6]. Therefore the best available answer — based on the provided reporting — is that Birmingham, Baltimore, and Atlanta are among the largest documented year‑over‑year declines from 2024 to 2025, with other claims (Denver’s large reduction, for example) reported by secondary aggregators but requiring verification against full, consistent city datasets [4] [7] [1].