Which NYC neighborhoods saw the biggest increases or decreases in crime in 2025?
Executive summary
New York City saw broad declines in major felony crimes through 2025 — with shootings and homicides falling to near‑historic lows and index crime down in multiple quarterly reports — but the changes were uneven, concentrating dramatic improvements in some precincts and leaving stubborn hotspots where violence remains clustered [1][2][3]. Any neighborhood‑level read must be cautious: official CompStat and city press releases show clear precinct wins in places like East Harlem and Washington Heights/Inwood, while independent analysts and advocacy groups warn gun violence remains concentrated in a small set of neighborhoods that still account for a disproportionate share of shootings [4][5][6].
1. Biggest decreases: precincts and neighborhoods with the largest measurable drops
Manhattan registered some of the most pronounced declines in 2025: the borough reported dramatic reductions in homicides and shootings in the first half of the year, with Manhattan prosecutors and city statistics citing a roughly 46% drop in homicides and a 43% decline in shootings year‑to‑date in one mid‑year briefing, and specific precincts such as the 23rd Precinct (East Harlem) falling from six to two homicides while the 34th Precinct (Washington Heights/Inwood) saw shootings drop from eleven to four incidents in the period cited [4]. Citywide NYPD releases emphasize historic lows for shooting incidents and victims across the first nine months of 2025 and repeated month‑to‑month declines in index crimes — including a 10.9% drop in index crime in Q1 and further seven‑straight monthly declines reported in April — which together locate the biggest numeric improvements in large, high‑incident neighborhoods where concentrated policing and interventions were focused [2][7][1].
2. Biggest increases or stubborn trouble spots: where crime did not fall and where some categories rose
Despite overall progress, not all metrics improved: the Council on Criminal Justice found New York’s reported sexual assault rate was about 20% higher in the first half of 2025 than the same period in 2024, a rise that officials and analysts link in part to a 2024 statutory redefinition that broadened the legal category and thus increased reporting [8][7]. Analysts repeatedly caution that while murders and shootings fell, gun violence remained spatially concentrated — a small set of neighborhoods still accounted for roughly half of the city’s shootings, meaning local increases or flatlines can persist even as city totals drop [6][5]. Per‑capita patterns and borough comparisons also show variation: some analyses place parts of the Bronx high on per‑capita violent‑crime measures even as borough‑level totals may move differently than Manhattan or Brooklyn [9].
3. Why these patterns emerged: enforcement, prevention programs, gentrification, and reporting shifts
City officials attribute much of the decline to policing strategies and targeted violence‑reduction work, and prosecutors and the NYPD point to enforcement plus community interventions as drivers of the large precinct gains in Manhattan and other boroughs [4][1]; researchers and local advocates add that community‑led prevention programs, targeted investments, and longer‑term structural changes also matter for sustained drops [5]. Parallel forces changed recorded statistics: gentrification in parts of Brooklyn is correlated with sustained crime decreases in those gentrified pockets even while displacement shifts problems geographically, and legal definitional changes (notably rape statutes) altered some category counts — all of which complicate simple “crime went up/down” narratives [10][11][7].
4. Data caveats and how to verify neighborhood claims
Every major source stresses limits: retail theft numbers are especially sensitive to reporting practices, some city figures are preliminary and subject to revision, and shifts in legal definitions or reporting behavior can look like crime increases where none in victimization occurred [6][7][2]. For precinct‑level confirmation, the NYPD’s CompStat portal and quarterly Crime Status Reports provide the underlying week‑by‑week and precinct tables that let researchers validate neighborhood claims, and independent heat maps and dashboards such as Safemap or the VitalCity analyses can help visualize concentration even as they rely on the same underlying data [12][13][14].