Fact check: Which US city has seen the largest decrease in crime rates from 2024 to 2025?

1. Why the FBI’s national picture can’t answer the city-ranking question

The FBI’s reports emphasize a 4.5% nationwide decrease in violent crime in 2024 and a 14.9% drop in murder and non-negligent manslaughter, but they explicitly do not provide the granular city-level comparison needed to say which municipality had the single largest drop from 2024 to 2025. The FBI dataset aggregates information from over 16,000 agencies and reports overall trends, and the releases cited note declines across categories without announcing per-city winners or rankings. Because the FBI summaries do not list city-by-city year-over-year percentage changes, they cannot support a definitive answer to which U.S. city experienced the largest decline between those years ^{[2] [1] [5]}. National trend data therefore cannot be used to infer the top city without supplementary city-level files.

2. Local evaluations show significant declines, but they aren’t nationally compared

Several local studies and reports document sizeable improvements in particular places—Kensington in Philadelphia reportedly saw a 45% drop in homicides and a 17% reduction in violent crime, while targeted Chicago interventions reported double-digit declines in burglaries and robberies in treated neighborhoods. These results are meaningful at the neighborhood or program scale and suggest drivers like revitalization, lighting, and housing interventions can produce measurable reductions. However, none of these local reports attempt a head-to-head national comparison across cities for 2024–2025, so they cannot establish which city declined the most overall ^{[3] [4] [6]}. Local success stories are compelling but not nationally ranked.

3. Program evaluations point to plausible causes but limited scope

Research released in early 2025 links enhanced street lighting in Philadelphia to a 15% drop in outdoor nighttime street crimes and a 21% drop in nighttime gun violence, while Chicago’s Micro Market Recovery Program links housing improvements to declines in property and violent crimes in treated areas. These findings provide plausible causal mechanisms for crime reduction—environmental design, place-based interventions, and violence-interruption programs—but they apply to specific interventions and neighborhoods rather than entire cities. The studies’ designs and scope limit generalizability; thus, they explain how declines can happen without proving which city achieved the largest aggregate year-over-year reduction ^{[6] [4]}. Intervention success at scale remains context-dependent.

4. Reporting gaps and data timing complicate cross-city comparison

The sources show a timing and coverage mismatch: the FBI’s national figures summarize 2024 outcomes and are published in mid-2025, while local studies report shorter-term program evaluations released in early 2025. City-level official crime statistics for full 2025 year-on-year comparisons would be needed, but such data either had not been included in the materials provided or remain unpublished in a comparable national dataset. Without consistent reporting windows, identical crime definitions, and standardized population denominators across cities, any claim about the “largest decrease” would be methodologically weak ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Comparability constraints prevent a reliable national ranking.

5. What the available evidence does allow us to say confidently

From the assembled reporting, it is factual that violent crime in the U.S. declined in 2024 and that several cities and neighborhoods reported notable local reductions tied to specific interventions. Philadelphia’s Kensington and treated Chicago neighborhoods stand out for large percentage drops in particular crime types, and the FBI confirms a nationwide reduction in violent crime overall. Nevertheless, the provided materials collectively lack the comprehensive, city-level, year-over-year dataset necessary to name a single U.S. city as having the largest decrease from 2024 to 2025 ^{[2] [3] [4]}. Any stronger assertion would require additional city-by-city data.

6. What would be needed to resolve the question definitively

A definitive answer requires access to standardized, city-level crime counts or rates for both 2024 and 2025 with uniform definitions, population denominators, and reporting windows. Ideally, this would be either (a) complete FBI city-level submissions for both years with percentage-change calculations, or (b) reconciled municipal public-safety reports that use comparable metrics across cities. The current materials do not supply such a dataset. Until those data are produced and analyzed consistently, naming a single city as the largest decliner is not supported ^{[5] [1]}.

7. Bottom line for readers and reporters

Based on the provided sources, the correct factual statement is that no source in this collection identifies a U.S. city as having the largest decrease in crime rates from 2024 to 2025; national FBI data show broad declines, and localized studies document notable drops in places like Kensington and parts of Chicago, but those are not framed as nationwide comparative rankings. Reporters or analysts seeking to name a top city must obtain and standardize city-level 2024 and 2025 crime data before making such a claim ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Until then, assertions singling out one city remain unverified by these materials.