Short answer: If you live in New York City, the data says your neighborhood is almost certainly safer this spring than it was a year ago — and dramatically safer than it was a decade or a generation ago. Through the week ending May 17, 2026, total major crime across the five boroughs is down 6.2% year-to-date compared to the same point in 2025, and murders are down 25.2%. The longer you zoom out, the better the picture looks. That is the headline. But “the city is safer” and “my block is safer” are not the same sentence, so this piece walks you through how to read the numbers for the decision you actually care about: whether you should feel comfortable on your own street.
What the latest numbers actually say
The most recent NYPD CompStat citywide report covers the week of May 11 through May 17, 2026. It is the official weekly scorecard the department publishes for every precinct, borough, and the city as a whole. Here is what the year-to-date column — the running total for 2026 so far — shows compared with the same stretch of 2025:
- Murder: 89 this year vs. 119 last year — down 25.2%
- Robbery: 4,682 vs. 5,231 — down 10.5%
- Burglary: 3,927 vs. 4,858 — down 19.2%
- Grand larceny auto (car theft): 4,218 vs. 4,688 — down 10.0%
- Grand larceny: 16,031 vs. 16,721 — down 4.1%
- Felony assault: 10,644 vs. 10,714 — down 0.7%
- Shooting victims: 254 vs. 282 — down 9.9%
- Overall major crime: down 6.2% citywide
One category moved the other way. Reported rape is up 7.3% year-to-date (812 vs. 757). That increase needs translation rather than alarm, and we will get to why in a moment.
Decoding the jargon: what “major crime” and “year-to-date” mean for you
CompStat tracks seven “index” or “major” crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto. When you see a single citywide percentage like “down 6.2%,” it is the combined total of all seven. That is useful for the city’s report card, but it blends a stranger shooting with a catalytic-converter theft, so it tells you very little about your specific risk. The categories that map most closely to “is it dangerous to walk around” are murder, shooting incidents, robbery, and felony assault. The categories that map to “will my stuff get taken” are burglary, grand larceny, and auto theft. Read them separately.
“Year-to-date” simply means January 1 through the end of the reporting week — the cumulative tally for 2026 so far. It is a more stable number than the single-week figure, which can swing wildly. For example, the report shows only 2 murders in the week of May 11–17 versus 6 in the same week of 2025, a 66.7% drop. That sounds enormous, but a four-incident difference over seven days is statistical noise. The year-to-date number — 89 vs. 119 — is the one to trust for a trend.
The long view: your real baseline
The Saturday question is not just “down from last year?” but “down from when things felt normal?” CompStat answers this directly with a historical-perspective table comparing today’s pace to full calendar years going back to 1990. Using 2025’s complete-year totals as the reference point, the comparison is stark:
- Murder: 309 in all of 2025 vs. 2,262 in 1990 — an 86.3% decline over 35 years.
- Robbery: 15,075 vs. 100,280 in 1990 — down 85.0%.
- Burglary: 12,798 vs. 122,055 — down 89.5%.
- Auto theft: 13,523 vs. 146,925 — down 90.8%.
- Total major crime: 121,652 vs. 527,257 — down 76.9%.
Against 2001 — the year many longtime residents think of as the start of the “safe New York” era — 2025 still came in 24.9% lower on total major crime. And the 2026 pace is running below 2025. In other words, against both a 35-year baseline and a 2-year baseline, the direction is the same: down. This is the trend anchor that matters. If your mental image of New York crime is set by movies, the 1990s, or social media clips, the actual numbers are a fraction of what they were.
Two categories buck the long decline and deserve honesty. Felony assault in 2025 (29,838) was 29.6% higher than in 2001, and rape complaints have risen — though that is heavily shaped by reporting changes, discussed below. Property crime like grand larceny has also crept up from its early-2000s lows even as it stays far under 1990 levels. So the “safer” story is real but not uniform.
The rape number: a reporting change, not a crime wave
Reported rape is up 7.3% year-to-date, and that number requires careful reading rather than a gut reaction. In September 2024, New York enacted the Rape is Rape Act, which broadened the legal definition of rape to include additional forms of sexual assault that were previously charged under different statutes. The NYPD’s own April reporting shows that a meaningful share of the increase comes from incidents now classified as rape under the expanded definition, plus a portion from survivors reporting incidents that occurred in earlier years. A rising count here partly reflects a wider legal net and more survivors coming forward — not necessarily more assaults occurring. It does not mean your daily street risk went up. Rape also remains underreported; the NYPD’s 24-hour Special Victims Division hotline is 212-267-RAPE (7273).
How to check YOUR block, not just the city
Citywide and even borough numbers can hide a lot. The single most useful move for a resident is to find your precinct’s own CompStat report, because crime is intensely local — two precincts that share a border can run in opposite directions. Here is the practical sequence:
- Find your precinct number. Search “NYPD precinct finder” and enter your address, or check the NYPD borough-and-precinct stats page.
- Pull your precinct’s CompStat PDF. The NYPD publishes one per precinct in the same format as the citywide report, with the same year-to-date and historical columns.
- Read the year-to-date column, not the weekly one. A single week is noise; the YTD trend is signal.
- Separate violence from property. Look at murder, shootings, robbery, and felony assault for personal-safety questions. Look at burglary, grand larceny, and auto theft for property questions. Your block might be quiet on violence but a hotspot for car break-ins, or vice versa.
- Compare to the historical-perspective column. If your precinct is down versus last year but you want the real baseline, the 16-year and 33-year change columns tell you how today compares to the bad old days.
What this means for your everyday decisions
If you are deciding whether to take a late subway home, the relevant data is transit crime, which is essentially flat year-to-date (816 vs. 814, up 0.2%) — neither worsening nor improving much, so your usual judgment applies. If you are weighing a move to a new neighborhood, pull both precincts’ year-to-date murder, shooting, and robbery numbers and compare them directly rather than relying on reputation. If you are worried about your car or your apartment, note that burglary (down 19.2%) and auto theft (down 10.0%) are among the strongest-declining categories citywide this year, though local hotspots still exist. And if you simply want to know whether the anxiety is justified: on the violence that drives most fear — murder and shootings — the city is running at near-record lows, with murders down a quarter from last year and far below any point in the past three decades.
The honest summary: New York City in spring 2026 is, by its own official measure, safer than it was last year and vastly safer than it was a generation ago, with the clearest gains in murder, shootings, robbery, and burglary. The exceptions — a roughly flat felony-assault rate and a rape count inflated partly by a broader legal definition — are worth knowing but do not reverse the overall trend. The number that should guide your decisions is your own precinct’s year-to-date figure, read category by category. Pull it, and you will be deciding from data instead of from a feeling.
Sources
All figures in this article come directly from official NYPD primary sources:
- NYPD CompStat Citywide Report, Volume 33 Number 20, covering the week of 5/11/2026–5/17/2026, including year-to-date and historical-perspective tables — nyc.gov/assets/nypd CompStat citywide PDF
- NYPD press release, “NYPD Announces Fewest Murders in Recorded History for the First Four Months of the Year and in April,” May 4, 2026 (context on the Rape is Rape Act and April category detail) — nyc.gov NYPD PR007
All NYPD crime statistics are preliminary and subject to further analysis, revision, or change.
