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Fact check: Which city has a higher violent crime rate, Chicago or New York City, in 2025?
Executive Summary
FBI-derived tallies reported in August 2025 show New York City had a higher violent-crime rate than Chicago in 2025, about 671 vs. 540 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, respectively, making NYC higher on that specific metric [1]. Local data and reporting complicate the picture: Chicago recorded substantial year-over-year declines in 2025 for several categories, including murders down 31%, but those local trends do not, by themselves, overturn the FBI rate comparison that places NYC above Chicago on violent crime per capita [2] [3].
1. Why the FBI snapshot points to New York City leading on violent crime per capita
The FBI-based comparison cited in late August 2025 presents NYC with about 671 violent crimes per 100,000 versus Chicago at about 540 per 100,000, a straightforward per-capita contrast that places New York higher on the overall violent-crime rate metric [1]. This figure aggregates rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and murder into a single violent-crime rate; it’s useful for apples-to-apples city-to-city comparisons, but it depends on reporting practices, population denominators, and timing of data submission. Analysts noted that relying on these aggregates can mask differences in homicide counts or neighborhood concentration, which matter for policy and perception [4].
2. Chicago’s own 2025 narrative: sharp declines but not a direct rebuttal
Chicago reported an overall 13% decrease in crime in 2025, and a 31% decline in murders compared with 2024, according to city police communications; these reductions are significant locally and shape public debate about progress [2]. However, those internal trend figures do not provide the cross-city per-capita comparison necessary to overturn the FBI-derived rates showing NYC higher; Chicago’s improvements may have narrowed gaps or changed rankings in certain categories, but the FBI snapshot remained the clearest direct comparison pointing to New York City’s higher violent-crime rate for the 2025 reporting period [2] [3].
3. Homicides vs. violent-crime rate: numbers tell different stories
Reporting shows Chicago has led large U.S. cities in sheer counts of homicides for many recent years, even when its per-capita homicide rate was not the highest among all U.S. cities—this distinction matters because total homicides and rates per 100,000 convey different policy and perception issues [4]. The 2024 FBI data cited for Chicago lists a murder rate of 17.5 per 100,000 [3], but city-level homicide totals can remain politically salient even if per-capita comparisons put other cities higher; thus the public conversation often focuses on absolute numbers while statistical comparisons focus on rates [4].
4. New York City’s 2025 decline narrative and how it affects comparisons
Multiple New York-focused reports in early and mid-2025 documented notable declines in major crimes, with some months described as the least violent since the 1990s and index-crime drops in early 2025 [5] [6]. Yet despite those declines, the FBI-derived annualized violent-crime rate used in the August 2025 comparison still placed New York above Chicago overall [1]. That indicates short-term monthly improvements can coexist with a higher annual rate if prior months or differences in definitions and reporting timing are factored in [5].
5. Data limitations and why single-source conclusions mislead
All the presented sources have limits: FBI aggregates depend on submission completeness and definitions; local police departments emphasize year-over-year changes that may use different baselines; private indices focus on subsets of crime or property crime rather than violent crime [1] [2] [7]. Because each source brings a different emphasis, the clearest statement supported by the combined sources is that the FBI-based per-capita violent-crime rate in 2025 was higher in New York City than in Chicago, while recognizing Chicago showed substantial local declines and differing profiles across neighborhoods [1] [2] [8].
6. What the competing narratives may be trying to achieve
Local officials highlight declines and neighborhood-level progress to show policy effectiveness and reassure residents, while national reporting often uses FBI per-capita rates to rank cities, which can amplify political arguments about crime in big cities [2] [1]. The disparate emphases suggest possible agendas: municipal authorities seek to demonstrate improvement, whereas national narratives can prioritize comparisons that fit broader themes. Readers should treat each claim with attention to metric, timeframe, and who stands to benefit from the framing [4] [2].
7. Bottom line for the question asked: which city had a higher violent-crime rate in 2025?
Based on the FBI-derived figures reported in August 2025, New York City had the higher violent-crime rate—approximately 671 violent crimes per 100,000 compared with Chicago’s 540 per 100,000 [1]. That conclusion stands alongside important caveats: Chicago recorded notable declines in 2025 and leads in raw homicide counts in many prior years, and month-to-month trends and differing data sources can shift interpretations; therefore the FBI per-capita comparison is authoritative for this specific question but not the only relevant context [2] [4].