Is New York City Getting Safer? Here’s What the Latest Crime Data Actually Means for You
If you’ve been wondering whether your neighborhood is genuinely getting safer — or whether the good news you keep hearing is just spin — the latest NYPD data gives you something real to work with. Not headlines. Numbers. And some of those numbers are, by any honest measure, historic.
This is the decoded version. Here’s what the data says, what it means for your daily decisions, and how 2026 compares to where New York City has been over the past three decades.
The Short Answer: Yes, Crime Is Down — Significantly
The most recent NYPD CompStat citywide report, covering the week of April 27 through May 3, 2026, shows total major crime down 15.8% compared to the same week last year. Year-to-date through early May, major crime is down 6.2% — meaning nearly 2,400 fewer serious crimes have been reported compared to the same stretch in 2025.
That’s not a statistical blip. It follows a first quarter in which the city recorded 54 murders — the fewest in recorded NYPD history for any first quarter, beating the previous low of 60 set in 2018.
For residents trying to make real decisions — whether to walk home at night, whether to move to a new neighborhood, whether to let your teenager take the subway alone — this context matters: New York City is measurably safer right now than it was at almost any comparable point in the city’s recent past.
Breaking Down What’s Falling — and What Isn’t
Not every crime category is moving in the same direction. Here’s the honest breakdown, pulled directly from the CompStat report for the week ending May 3, 2026:
Murder: Down 66.7% for the week (2 vs. 6 last year). Down 28.7% year-to-date (77 vs. 108). This is perhaps the starkest signal — murders are at historic lows. The year-to-date figure is 87.9% lower than the same period in 1990, when the city recorded 2,262 murders in a single year.
Robbery: Down 16.3% for the week (292 vs. 349). Down 9.5% year-to-date (4,146 vs. 4,583). For context: in 1990, the full year saw over 100,000 robberies. The city is on pace for roughly 17,000 this year — an 85% reduction over 33 years.
Burglary: Down 21% for the week (188 vs. 238). Down 20.1% year-to-date (3,516 vs. 4,399). Q1 2026 burglaries hit their second-lowest level on record. If you’ve been worried about break-ins, this is one of the better moments statistically to be a New Yorker.
Grand Larceny (theft of property): Down 12.2% for the week (867 vs. 987). Down 3.7% year-to-date (14,277 vs. 14,820). This is the one category that remains relatively high compared to historical lows — grand larceny is actually up 23% compared to 16 years ago, reflecting long-running trends around package theft, phone snatching, and retail theft that the city has struggled to fully reverse.
Felony Assault: Down 13% for the week (575 vs. 661). Down 1.4% year-to-date (9,361 vs. 9,494). The year-to-date decline is modest, and this category is 75.5% higher than 16 years ago — a persistent challenge that the department has not fully reversed, even as murders have plummeted.
Shooting Victims: Down 38.1% for the week (13 vs. 21). Down 5.6% year-to-date (236 vs. 250). The city recorded only 139 shooting incidents in Q1 2026, tying the all-time low set in 2025.
The One Number Going the Wrong Way: Rape
Rape incidents are up 7.9% year-to-date (725 vs. 672) and up 9.5% over the most recent 28-day period. This requires context before you panic or dismiss it.
In September 2024, New York State expanded the legal definition of rape to include additional forms of sexual assault that were previously categorized differently. That legislative change directly increases the count of reported rape incidents without necessarily reflecting an increase in underlying violence. The NYPD has also actively worked with advocates to encourage survivors to come forward.
What this means for residents: the statistical increase is substantially — though not entirely — a product of better reporting and a broader legal definition, not necessarily a surge in attacks. The NYPD acknowledges this in its official materials. That said, any sexual violence figure warrants serious attention, and residents should remain aware of their surroundings in transit environments and late-night public spaces.
Transit: A Mixed Picture
The subway is one of the biggest quality-of-life questions for most New Yorkers. For the week of April 27–May 3, transit crime was actually up 50% (57 vs. 38 incidents). That’s a jarring number on its face.
But zoom out: year-to-date transit crime is essentially flat, down just 0.1% (732 vs. 733). And the context from Q1 data is encouraging — last year was the safest year on the subway since 2009 (excluding pandemic years), and the NYPD has generally sustained that progress through early 2026. One week of elevated transit numbers does not a trend make. It bears watching, but it doesn’t change the overall picture.
The practical takeaway: your subway ride is statistically safer than it’s been in well over a decade, though peak hours and late-night travel on certain lines still carry elevated risk compared to weekday midday trips.
The 33-Year View: How Far New York Has Come
This is where the data gets genuinely remarkable — and where the “is my city getting safer?” question gets answered most clearly.
The same CompStat report that tracks this week’s crimes also carries a historical perspective column comparing 2025 full-year figures to 1990. Here’s what that looks like:
In 1990, New York City recorded 2,262 murders in a single year. In 2025, the full-year total was 309 — an 86.3% reduction. Robbery fell from 100,280 incidents in 1990 to 15,075 in 2025 — an 85% drop. Burglary went from 122,055 to 12,798 — an 89.5% reduction. Grand larceny auto fell from 146,925 to 13,523 — a 90.8% decline.
This is not a gradual drift. This is a transformation. The New York City of 2026 is, by these measures, a fundamentally different place than the city of the late 1980s and early 1990s — when crime shaped virtually every decision about where to live, work, and whether to ride the subway at all.
If you were a New Yorker in 1990 and someone told you that murder would fall 87% by the mid-2020s, you would not have believed them. It happened.
Public Housing: Finally Getting the Same Progress
One of the long-standing frustrations about citywide crime statistics is that they can mask persistent danger in specific communities — particularly public housing developments, where violence has historically been more concentrated than citywide averages would suggest.
The Q1 2026 data offers a more encouraging picture on this front. The NYPD reported the safest start to any year in NYCHA developments in recorded history: murders down 62.5% (3 vs. 8), shooting incidents down 29.6% (19 vs. 27), and robberies down 27.3% (157 vs. 216) compared to Q1 2025.
For residents of public housing — who often rightly feel that “citywide” crime improvements don’t reach their buildings — this is meaningful. It doesn’t erase years of disparity, and one quarter is not a transformation. But it is a genuine positive signal for communities that have waited a long time to see these trends move their direction.
What’s Driving the Improvement?
The NYPD attributes the declines primarily to its Winter Violence Reduction Plan, which deploys up to 1,800 uniformed officers on nightly foot posts across 64 zones in 34 precincts, public housing, and the subway. Since launching in January, major crime is down 23.2% and shootings are down 63.6% in those deployment zones during deployment hours.
The department has also cited a targeted approach to gun seizures — 1,146 guns removed from streets in Q1 alone — and the dismantling of violent gangs as key contributors.
Whether this represents a durable structural shift or a deployment-dependent improvement that fades when resources are redeployed elsewhere is the central question residents and analysts are watching. The city has been through cycles of improvement before. The question is always what happens next.
The Hate Crime Complication
One category that moved in the wrong direction in Q1 2026: confirmed hate crimes rose 11.7% (143 vs. 128). More than half — 55% — were anti-Jewish bias incidents. The NYPD has been enhancing its hate crime reporting methodology this year, releasing both confirmed and reported (pending investigation) figures for the first time, so some of the apparent increase may reflect better counting rather than a pure increase in incidents. But the underlying trend warrants attention regardless.
What This Means for Your Actual Decisions
The data supports some practical conclusions for residents:
If you’ve been delaying moving to a neighborhood because of crime concerns, the trajectory is meaningful. The overall direction of virtually every serious crime category has been downward — some dramatically so — for the better part of three decades, with 2026 continuing that trend.
If you’re concerned specifically about property crime, grand larceny and retail theft remain elevated compared to some historical benchmarks, though both are falling this year. Keep your phone out of sight, be aware in crowded transit environments, and don’t leave valuables visible in vehicles.
If the subway is a daily concern, the overall picture is better than public perception often suggests — though the recent weekly spike bears watching, and late-night and off-peak travel on certain lines carries more risk than the headline numbers imply.
The numbers are real. The improvement is real. And New York in 2026 — whatever its remaining challenges — is not the city it was in 1990, or 2001, or even 2020.
How to Check Your Specific Neighborhood
The statistics in this article are citywide. Your specific precinct may look different. The NYPD publishes individual precinct-level CompStat reports weekly at nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/crime-statistics/borough-and-precinct-crime-stats.page. You can look up your precinct by address and see exactly how your local area is trending — week to week, year to year.
You can also explore interactive data at CompStat 2.0, the NYPD’s digital dashboard, which lets you filter by crime type, time period, and geography.
The data is public. Use it.
Sources: NYPD CompStat Citywide Report, Week of 4/27/2026–5/3/2026 (nyc.gov); NYPD Q1 2026 Crime Statistics Press Release, April 2, 2026 (nyc.gov). All crime statistics are preliminary and subject to further analysis and revision.
