Queens Crime Stats 2026 Decoded: What the Numbers Actually Mean for Your Block

Queens crime through May 17, 2026 — translated from NYPD CompStat into resident decisions. Burglary down 33%, shootings down 20%, but grand larceny and car theft are up. What the data means for your block.

If you live in Queens — or you’re thinking about moving there — and you’ve tried to make sense of the borough’s crime numbers, you’ve probably hit the same wall most residents do. The NYPD posts weekly CompStat PDFs full of category names like “Fel. Assault” and “G.L.A.,” historical baselines stretching back to 1990, and percentage changes that swing wildly week to week. That isn’t a crime report. That’s a wall of numbers. So let’s translate it into what you actually want to know: is your block trending safer or harder this year, and where should you adjust your daily routine?

The data below comes directly from the NYPD’s CompStat reports for Queens North and Queens South for the week ending Sunday, May 17, 2026. Both reports were published by the NYPD CompStat Unit (Volume 33, Number 20) and pulled the morning of May 19, 2026. Every number cited here can be verified at the source URLs at the bottom of this article.

Queens overall: the headline you should walk away with

Combine Queens North and Queens South — the two patrol boroughs that together cover the entire borough of Queens — and through the first 19 weeks of 2026, total major crime is down 0.96% year-over-year (9,056 incidents in 2026 vs. 9,144 in 2025). That looks like a flat year on the surface, but the headline number hides a much more useful story underneath. Some categories have dropped sharply. Others have ticked up. And the borough split between the two patrol commands tells two pretty different stories about what’s happening on the ground.

Decoded: Queens is not having a “crime is exploding” year, and it is not having a “crime is collapsing” year either. It is having a year where car theft and pickpocketing went up while burglary and shootings went down hard. Which of those matters to you depends entirely on what you do during the day.

The two Queens you actually live in

Queens is policed as two separate patrol boroughs, and the data shows why that matters. Queens North covers the western and northern half of the borough — Long Island City, Astoria, Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, Corona, Flushing, Bayside, and the precincts running up to the Bronx border. Queens South covers Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Jamaica, the Rockaways, Ozone Park, and the precincts down to the JFK perimeter.

Queens North year-to-date through May 17: – Murder: 8 in 2026 vs. 13 in 2025 — down 38.5% – Robbery: 561 vs. 555 — up 1.1% (essentially flat) – Felony Assault: 1,054 vs. 1,158 — down 9.0% – Burglary: 457 vs. 731 — down 37.5% – Grand Larceny: 2,035 vs. 1,989 — up 2.3% – Grand Larceny Auto: 936 vs. 778 — up 20.3% – Shooting Victims: 16 vs. 16 — flat – Total Major Crime: 5,156 vs. 5,309 — down 2.88%

Queens South year-to-date through May 17: – Murder: 13 vs. 11 — up 18.2% – Robbery: 428 vs. 413 — up 3.6% – Felony Assault: 1,129 vs. 1,092 — up 3.4% – Burglary: 304 vs. 408 — down 25.5% – Grand Larceny: 1,315 vs. 1,148 — up 14.5% – Grand Larceny Auto: 617 vs. 688 — down 10.3% – Shooting Victims: 15 vs. 23 — down 34.8% – Total Major Crime: 3,900 vs. 3,835 — up 1.69%

Translated: Queens North is the bigger half of the borough by crime volume, and almost every serious category there is moving in the resident’s favor. Queens South is smaller in volume but the trend lines split — shootings and burglaries dropped sharply, but the categories that involve simply taking things from people (grand larceny, robbery, felony assault) ticked up. If you live in a Queens South neighborhood — Jamaica, Forest Hills, Ozone Park, the Rockaways — the data is telling you the violent-incident risk is meaningfully lower this year, but the property-crime risk is slightly higher.

What “Grand Larceny” and “G.L.A.” actually mean

Two of the most important numbers in the Queens data are dragging the headline in opposite directions, and both have category names that don’t mean what residents think they mean.

Grand Larceny in New York State Penal Law is theft of property valued at more than $1,000. In practical terms for Queens residents, that overwhelmingly means: phones lifted on the subway, packages taken from lobbies and stoops, laptops yanked off a café table, identity theft and credit card fraud, and shoplifting that crosses the $1,000 threshold. It is not “robbery” — there is no force or threat involved. The thief did not touch you. You just discovered later that your stuff is gone, or your card was used somewhere.

Combined Queens grand larceny is up sharply: 3,350 incidents YTD vs. 3,137 in 2025, a 6.8% increase. Most of that increase is concentrated in Queens South (+14.5%). Queens North is flat (+2.3%). For residents, this is the single most important data point in the entire report: the most likely crime to happen to you this year in Queens is your phone, package, wallet, or card information walking off without you noticing in the moment.

G.L.A. stands for Grand Larceny Auto, which is the NYPD’s category for stolen vehicles. Queens North is up 20.3% YTD (936 vs. 778). Queens South is down 10.3% (617 vs. 688). Combined Queens is up 5.9% (1,553 vs. 1,466). That divergence inside one borough is unusual and worth understanding: the western and northern half of Queens — the part closer to the Bronx and Brooklyn — saw a significant jump in car theft this year, while the southern half saw a decline. If you park overnight in Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, Corona, or Flushing, the data is telling you to take car security seriously in 2026 in a way that wasn’t necessary in 2025.

The breakdown that matters more than the model of your car: Kia and Hyundai vehicles built between 2011 and 2021 remain disproportionately targeted citywide because of an ignition-bypass vulnerability that went viral in 2022. If you own one, an aftermarket steering wheel lock, the manufacturer’s free software update, and parking under a streetlight or in a garage all materially change your odds.

Burglary: the one big win

If there is a single number worth celebrating in the 2026 Queens data, it’s burglary. Queens North is down 37.5% YTD. Queens South is down 25.5%. Combined Queens is down 33.2% — 761 incidents in 2026 vs. 1,139 in 2025.

Decoded: burglary in NYPD definitions means someone entered a building (your apartment, your house, your business) with intent to commit a crime, usually theft. It is the home-invasion category. A 33% borough-wide decline in five months is significant. For residents, this is the category most worth knowing about, because burglary is what most people actually picture when they hear “crime in my neighborhood.”

This is not a fluke specific to Queens. The NYPD’s first-quarter 2026 press release (April 2, 2026) reported the citywide fewest murders and shooting incidents on record for any Q1 since modern record-keeping began, with burglary down 18.4% citywide. Queens is outperforming the citywide burglary trend by a meaningful margin.

Shootings: a quietly important divergence

Shooting victims in Queens North are flat year-over-year (16 vs. 16). Shooting victims in Queens South are down 34.8% (15 vs. 23). Combined Queens shooting victims: 31 vs. 39 in 2025, down 20.5%.

For perspective on how rare shootings have become as routine crime in Queens, consider: in 1993, Queens North alone recorded 8,840 robberies in one year, and shootings were not separately tracked because the volume was high enough that they were just folded into homicide and assault data. In 2026, the entire borough of Queens is on pace for fewer than 100 shooting victims for the year. That is a generational shift, and it’s the data point that matters most for residents who grew up here or moved here from a high-violence city and are still calibrating their baseline.

Hate crimes: small numbers, real signal

Queens reported 12 hate crimes YTD in Queens North (vs. 11 in 2025, up 9.1%) and 3 in Queens South (vs. 4, down 25%). These numbers are small enough that one or two incidents move the percentage by a lot, so the year-over-year change isn’t the story. The story is that 15 hate crimes have been reported across the entire borough in 19 weeks — roughly one every 9 days. If you experience or witness a bias-motivated incident, the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force operates a citywide hotline at (646) 610-5267, and reports can also be made to any precinct.

Transit crime: still rare, still real

Subway crime in Queens through May 17, 2026: 81 incidents in Queens North (vs. 128 in 2025, down 36.7%) and 51 incidents in Queens South (vs. 33, up 54.5%, but on small base numbers). If you ride the 7, the E, the F, the J/Z, the N/W, or any of the connecting lines through Queens, the data is telling you that the western Queens lines have gotten meaningfully safer this year, while the southern Queens lines are still in the noise — small enough that any one incident moves the percentage. Either way, you are still statistically more likely to have something taken from you than to be the victim of a violent incident on the train.

What this means for your block

Strip away the category names and the percent changes and the historical baselines, and the practical takeaway for a Queens resident in May 2026 looks like this. Your odds of being burglarized at home are materially lower than they were a year ago. Your odds of being the victim of a shooting are also lower, and they were already very low. Your odds of having your phone, wallet, package, or card information taken — without you noticing in the moment — are higher than they were a year ago, especially in Queens South. And if you own a 2011–2021 Kia or Hyundai and park on the street in western or northern Queens, the data is telling you to invest in basic anti-theft measures this year.

None of this means Queens is “safer” or “less safe” as a single sentence — it means the risk profile shifted. The borough did not get more dangerous in 2026. It got differently dangerous, in ways that reward residents who pay attention to the categories that are actually moving.

How to read your own precinct’s data

The 16 precincts in Queens each publish their own CompStat report on the same schedule. To pull yours: visit the NYPD Borough and Precinct Crime Stats page, click your borough, then click your precinct number. Each report shows the same eight categories at the precinct level, plus 28-day, year-to-date, and historical comparisons. If you don’t know your precinct, the NYPD’s “Find Your Precinct” tool on the same page accepts a street address.