Short answer: For most New Yorkers, yes. NYC is on track to record its safest year in modern history. Through the first quarter of 2026, major crime is down 5.3% citywide compared to 2025, murders hit a recorded all-time low, and burglaries are at their second-lowest level ever measured. But the citywide number hides the answer to your real question — is your block safer? — and the honest reply depends on which precinct you live in and which crime type is actually changing where you live.
This is the trend translation: what NYPD CompStat is telling residents this spring, and how to read it for the four blocks around your apartment instead of the five boroughs as a whole.
The headline numbers — and what they actually mean
Through March 31, 2026, the NYPD logged 54 murders citywide. That number broke the previous all-time low of 60 set in 2018. Shooting incidents came in at 139 — tied with the same period in 2025, which the department had already called the safest first quarter for gun violence in recorded history. Robberies dropped roughly 8%. Burglaries fell 21%. Retail theft was down 20.1% — and crucially, that decline happened in all five boroughs, not just one neighborhood pulling the average down.
Translated for residents: if you compared April 2026 to April 2024, the odds of any individual New Yorker being the victim of a major-category crime have measurably dropped — not by a sliver, but by a meaningful margin you would notice if you walked the same blocks two years apart. Fewer broken storefront windows. Fewer empty police-tape Sundays. Fewer ambulance lights at 3 a.m.
One category bucks the trend: rape complaints rose roughly 10% over the same period. NYPD officials and advocacy groups generally attribute increases in reported rape figures to a mix of actual incidents and improved willingness to report, but the data does not separate those two drivers, so residents should treat that line as the one place the trend is not improving.
Why the citywide average lies about your block
This is the part that matters more than the headline.
Brooklyn’s safety profile varies by roughly 400% between its safest and most violent precincts. The 19th Precinct on the Upper East Side runs major crime rates roughly 85% below the citywide average. The 73rd in Brownsville and the 40th in the South Bronx are still seeing shooting numbers far above the borough median, even as both boroughs’ totals decline. So when the mayor’s office announces “major crime down 5%,” that 5% is the average of one precinct dropping 12% and another dropping 0.5% in the same week.
What you do with that: pull your own precinct’s CompStat report. It is published weekly. If you live in the 19th, the 6th, the 84th, the 78th, the 26th, or the 94th, your trend line is significantly steeper downward than the citywide number suggests. If you live in the 73rd, 75th, 40th, 42nd, or 47th, the trend is still downward but you are working from a higher baseline, and absolute numbers matter more than percentages for daily decisions.
Borough by borough: the actual 2026 trend
The Bronx led every borough in Q1 2026 with a 9.4% drop in major crime — the steepest improvement in the city. Manhattan came in next at roughly a 7% decline, helped by a more than 44% decrease in murders. Brooklyn’s murder count fell 57% versus the same quarter in 2025 — the single largest borough-level drop in any violent category. Queens posted a more modest decline of just over 2%. Staten Island reported zero murders through the first three months of 2026 and a 5% overall major-crime decline.
The pattern: the boroughs that had the worst 2024 numbers improved the most in 2025-2026. That is consistent with the NYPD’s targeted-deployment strategy, which concentrated officers in 70 designated Violence Reduction zones spanning 57 precincts and reported a 28% crime reduction inside those zones specifically.
For residents, the practical read is this: if you moved into a Bronx neighborhood in 2023 because it was affordable and you were nervous about crime, the data you would have used to make that decision is now almost two years out of date in the wrong direction. The block is statistically safer than the headline that sent you there.
How to read your own neighborhood trend without getting fooled
Three rules for reading CompStat the way it actually answers your question:
1. Compare to the five-year average, not last week. Weekly CompStat reports show week-over-week and 28-day changes, and those numbers swing wildly because the underlying counts are small. A precinct that had 2 robberies last week and 4 this week is “up 100%” — but that is statistical noise. What matters is whether the trailing 12-month total is below the 2019-2024 average for that same precinct. If yes, your block is genuinely safer than its own historical baseline.
2. Look at the categories that match your actual life. A retiree on the Upper West Side cares about pickpocketing, package theft, and phone snatches — not the citywide shooting total. A bodega owner in Bushwick cares about commercial burglary and shoplifting, not subway robbery. The “major crime” composite is a policy metric, not a personal one. CompStat lets you filter by category. Use it.
3. Notice what improved and what didn’t. Citywide in 2026, the categories trending hardest in the right direction are murders, shootings, robberies, burglaries, and retail theft. The categories holding flat or rising are rape complaints (up 10%) and certain hate-crime subcategories (overall hate crime up 11.7% versus Q1 2025, with anti-Jewish incidents making up 55% of confirmed cases). If your concern is one of those, the citywide good news is not your good news.
What “safer” actually feels like at street level
Numbers are abstract. Here is what a 21% drop in burglaries means in plain English: if you owned a small apartment in a 100-unit building in 2024 and the building averaged 5 burglaries a year, the same building is now averaging closer to 4. You will not notice the difference in any single month. You will notice it across a year if you compare how often the building’s tenant-WhatsApp lit up about a stolen package or a forced lock.
The 8% robbery decline is the same idea on a city scale: roughly 1,000 fewer robberies in Q1 2026 than in Q1 2024. That is one fewer person per hour, every hour, around the clock, going through what is genuinely the worst day of their life. It does not show up as a vibe shift. It shows up as the absence of a story you would otherwise have heard from a neighbor.
This is what trend data does that anecdotes cannot: it counts the things that didn’t happen.
The honest caveats
Three things the trend data does not say, even though it is tempting to read them in:
It does not say every neighborhood improved. It says the average improved. The five-precinct cluster covering Brownsville, East New York, and parts of the South Bronx still posts violent-crime numbers several multiples above the citywide rate. Improvement there is real but starts from a higher baseline.
It does not say the subway is at the same trend as the streets. Transit crime runs on its own curve, with weekend evenings and certain end-of-line stations carrying disproportionate weight. The subway picture is its own story (and gets its own desk article on Wednesdays).
It does not say the trend will continue. CompStat is a rear-view mirror. The Q1 2026 numbers reflect deployment decisions and underlying conditions from late 2025 through March 2026. The trajectory could hold, accelerate, or reverse depending on factors no current dataset can predict.
The bottom line for your daily decisions
If you are deciding whether to renew a lease, walk home at 11 p.m., let a kid take the bus alone, or move into a neighborhood you are not sure about — the spring 2026 data says New York is, on average, materially safer than it has been in any year you can remember unless you remember the late 1950s. That does not mean every block is safe. It means the citywide trajectory is the most favorable it has been in modern record-keeping, and the boroughs that had the most ground to cover are covering it the fastest.
Pull your precinct’s CompStat report once a quarter. Read the categories that match your life, not the headline composite. Compare to the five-year average. That is the resident’s version of this data — not a vibe, not a policy debate, just the count of things that did and did not happen on the blocks you actually walk.
Frequently asked questions
Is my neighborhood actually getting safer in 2026?
Probably yes — major crime is down 5.3% citywide through Q1 2026, with declines in all five boroughs. But the citywide average hides large precinct-level variation. Pull your specific precinct’s weekly CompStat report to see your actual trend.
What is the safest borough in NYC right now?
By 2026 Q1 trend, Staten Island posted zero murders and a 5% major-crime decline. Manhattan’s overall rate remains lowest in the city, helped by very-low-crime precincts like the 19th and the 6th. The Bronx is improving fastest in percentage terms (down 9.4%).
Where do I find official NYPD crime data for my precinct?
NYPD CompStat 2.0 at compstat.nypdonline.org publishes weekly precinct-level reports. NYC OpenData provides downloadable historical datasets. Both are free.
Has crime really hit a record low in NYC?
For specific categories, yes. Q1 2026 logged 54 murders — the fewest first-quarter murders in NYPD recorded history. Shooting incidents tied 2025’s record low of 139. Burglaries are at their second-lowest level in recorded history.
What crime is still rising in NYC?
Reported rape complaints rose roughly 10% in Q1 2026 versus Q1 2025. Hate crimes overall rose 11.7%, with anti-Jewish incidents making up 55% of confirmed cases.
Sources: NYPD CompStat citywide and borough/precinct reports; NYC Mayor’s Office press release on Q1 2026 crime statistics (April 2, 2026); NYPD News PR006 announcement of fewest first-quarter murders in recorded history; NYC OpenData crime complaint datasets.
