Fact check: How does the 2025 crime rate in Chicago compare to its 2020 levels?

1. Why the “2025 down versus 2020” claim is striking — and partly unsupported by direct CPD comparisons

Several accounts circulating in 2025 claim homicides and shootings are down roughly 25% and 31% versus 2020, a striking multi‑year improvement that would signal major progress ^[1]. That assertion appears in a summary report dated April 28, 2025, but the Chicago Police Department’s publicized comparisons in the same window consistently present declines relative to early 2024 or year‑to‑date 2024 figures rather than to the 2020 baseline, meaning the 2020 comparison is not directly documented by the CPD materials cited in these items ^[1]. This difference in baselines matters because crime rates and patterns shifted sharply during 2020 amid the pandemic and its aftermath, so claims anchored to 2020 can exaggerate or understate change if the baseline isn’t shown.

2. Strong, consistent reporting of 2025 declines relative to 2024 from city sources

Multiple 2025 reports and CPD data points converge on notable year‑over‑year declines in 2025 compared with 2024, with the CPD reporting homicides and shootings down 25 percent and 31 percent through April 20, 2025, and April 2025 recording the lowest monthly homicide total since February 2015 with 20 cases ^{[1] [2]}. City leaders and police officials attribute these gains to targeted interventions — task forces, technology, and interagency partnerships — and the consistency across mid‑2025 local reporting supports the conclusion that 2025 showed meaningful short‑term improvement versus 2024, even if those same sources stop short of showing a 2020 comparison ^{[1] [4]}.

3. National context and FBI reporting that frame Chicago’s trend but do not replace local baselines

Federal data released in 2025 showing a national decline in violent crime (4.5 percent nationally in 2024 v. 2023) provides context for Chicago’s 2025 drops and is cited by local officials as corroborating evidence ^[4]. That national frame is useful for understanding whether Chicago’s movement is idiosyncratic or part of a broader pattern, but FBI and national aggregates don’t provide city‑level year‑to‑year baselines for Chicago’s 2020 comparison in the items provided. Therefore national declines support the plausibility of Chicago’s 2025 improvement but do not validate specific percentage changes versus 2020 without municipal data showing that direct two‑year comparison ^[4].

4. Contradictory narratives: some reporting and political voices emphasize rising crimes or policy causes

Other pieces, particularly from 2024, document increases in robbery, aggravated assault and battery at five‑year highs, and attribute upticks to legal reforms and prosecutorial or systemic issues—an argument advanced by Republican lawmakers and critics of Illinois’ SAFE‑T Act ^[5]. Those accounts highlight localized spikes and policy attribution, underscoring that crime trends are uneven across categories and neighborhoods; they caution against reading aggregate citywide declines as uniform improvements everywhere. The presence of these earlier 2024 claims explains why comparisons to 2020 can be politically charged and contested ^[5].

5. The 2024 baseline: high murder count complicates multi‑year comparisons

Chicago recorded 573 murders in 2024 and was characterized in a March 22, 2025 report as the nation’s “homicide capital” for a 13th consecutive year, with an 8 percent drop in murders described across a broader timeframe ^[3]. Those figures matter because any multi‑year change measured against 2020 must account for the elevated 2024 totals; a decline in early 2025 against 2024 can coexist with a still‑high multi‑year toll when measured per capita or against pre‑pandemic baselines. In short, 2025 gains do not erase the large numerical backdrop of 2024 without explicit multi‑year data showing the 2020 reference point.

6. What’s omitted and why it matters: neighborhood variability and crime categories

Available reporting emphasizes overall violent crime and homicides but often omits granular neighborhood‑level breakdowns and nonviolent categories that can tell a different story—burglaries, property crimes, or concentrated hot spots where incidents rose despite citywide declines ^[1]. The omission of a consistent 2020 baseline across CPD releases and the absence of detailed neighborhood data in these summaries mean that headline percentage comparisons can obscure important local differences and shifts in crime type, policing strategy, and socio‑economic drivers that are central to interpreting whether Chicago is genuinely safer than in 2020.

7. Bottom line: measured improvement in 2025 versus 2024; the 2020 comparison remains contested and under‑documented

The most defensible conclusion from the documents provided is that Chicago experienced measurable violent‑crime reductions in early and mid‑2025 relative to 2024, including notable drops in homicides and shootings as reported by CPD and city leaders ^{[1] [2]}. Claims asserting equivalent declines versus 2020 appear in some reporting but are not consistently supported by the primary CPD comparisons cited; therefore the proposition that 2025 crime rates are definitively lower than 2020 requires additional municipal data explicitly comparing those two years and more granular neighborhood and category breakdowns to resolve remaining disputes ^{[1] [3]}.