[title]
New York City’s summer crime wave? More like a summer crime ripple. The NYPD just dropped stats showing that July 2025 wasn’t just safer than last summer—it was one of the safest Julys since the city started keeping records.
Across the five boroughs, shootings hit all-time lows for the month, with just 75 incidents and 92 victims, per a recently released report. That’s down from the previous record in July 2017, when 79 incidents and 102 victims were recorded. And it wasn’t just July: The first seven months of 2025 also saw the lowest number of shootings (412) and shooting victims (489) since the NYPD began tracking the category in the 1990s.
RECOMMENDED: These New York towns were just named the safest in the whole state, per a new report
Even the notoriously tricky Fourth of July weekend, a time police say can spike gun violence, saw the lowest shooting totals ever recorded for the holiday—and tied the all-time low for the day itself.
Overall, major crime fell 5.6-percent in July compared to last year, marking the 10th straight month of declines. Murders dropped nearly in half (25 vs. 49), burglaries were down 14.2-percent, robberies dipped 7.5-percent and felony assaults fell 8.1-percent. In the subway, July crime was the lowest on record, excluding the pandemic’s ridership-starved summers of 2020–2021.
Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch credit the gains to “precision policing” and the city’s Summer Violence Reduction Plan. Since May, the NYPD has deployed more than 2,000 uniformed officers to 72 “summer zones” in precincts, public housing and transit hubs, focusing on high-priority crime hot spots. The payoff: Major crime in those zones is down over 20-percent during deployment hours, with shootings cut in half.
Guns remain a big part of the NYPD’s focus: More than 3,000 illegal firearms have been seized this year and more than 22,900 since Adams took office. Gang takedowns are also up, with 48 major busts so far in 2025 leading to 347 arrests and 236 guns recovered.
Not every number trended downward. Reported rapes rose 33-percent year-over-year in July, an increase officials link to changes in state law last fall that broadened the definition of rape to include more forms of sexual assault.
Still, city officials are quick to point out the larger trajectory. “This is the safest big city in America,” Adams said, noting that while high-profile incidents like last week’s Midtown mass shooting grab headlines, they happen against a backdrop of historically low crime rates.
For a city used to summer heat fueling summer trouble, 2025’s numbers suggest New York might finally be breaking that cycle—and giving New Yorkers a safer season to savor.