WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A new report shows that the murder rate across the United States' biggest cities plummeted last year to its lowest level since at least 1900, marking the biggest one-year drop in recorded history.
In addition to the historic drop in murders last year, the nation experienced steep declines in rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, shooting deaths, on-duty law enforcement officer deaths, traffic fatalities, and overdose deaths, according to the White House.
This data is based on an updated U.S. crime trends reports by the Council on Criminal Justice, after examining yearly and monthly rates of 13 violent, property, and drug offenses reported to police in 40 large American cities.
When nationwide data is reported by the FBI, homicides in 2025 dropped to about 4 per 100,000 residents. That would be the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900, and would mark the largest single-year percentage drop in the homicide rate on record.
Violent crime overall in 2025 was at or below levels in 2019, the year prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and racial justice protests of 2020. There were 25 percent fewer homicides in the study cities in 2025 than in 2019. Aggravated assault, gun assault, sexual assault, domestic violence, robbery, and carjacking also were lower in 2025 than in 2019.
The declines in crime, especially homicide, are promising, and are likely the result of a complex tangle of broad social and technological changes and direct policy interventions, the Council on Criminal Justice, an American think tank, said in its report.
'President Trump is reversing the chaos and carnage unleashed by Radical Left Democrats who turned our streets into war zones by coddling criminals and opening our borders. Since taking office, President Trump has deployed a whole-of-government offensive in Democrat-run cities, driving down crime, ridding the streets of savage criminal illegal aliens, backing law enforcement, and bringing back order where incompetent Democrat politicians surrendered to anarchy and despair,' the White House said.
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