NYC shootings, subway crime at record lows, shoplifting down as crime takes a hit

Leonard Greene, New York Daily News on Sep 2, 2025

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NEW YORK — New York City’s decline in major crimes continued this year with record-low shooting incidents and shooting victims through the first eight months of 2025, and the overall safest August ever, officials said Tuesday.

Even with a recent spike in gun violence in the Bronx, and threats from the White House to crack down on crime in New York City, Big Apple police brass boasted about new numbers that they said painted a rosy picture on everything from gang takedowns to the number of cops on the street.

“In the first eight months of the year, the NYPD drove down shooting incidents and shooting victims to the lowest levels in our city’s history,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a statement.

“Below ground on our subways, we have cut crime down to record lows, excluding the pandemic years. Our focus has been on taking illegal guns off the streets, arresting violent gang members, and deploying our most valuable resource — the men and women of the NYPD — on foot posts where they are most needed, and the results are clear: Our strategy is working, and our cops are driving down crime.”

The most celebrated stat was the decline in shooting incidents and the decrease in the number of shooting victims so far this year.

According to NYPD data, the city recorded 489 shooting incidents and 611 shooting victims, compared to 502 and 612 in 2018, the previous all-time lows during the CompStat era, which started in 1994.

The shooting numbers helped drive declines in major crime, with a 6.7% overall drop in August 2025 compared to the same time last year, officials said.

According to the data, crime has consistently declined each quarter since January 2024, marking the city’s seventh straight quarter of major crime decline.

Meanwhile, the month that just ended was the safest August on record for subway crime, excluding the COVID period of 2020 to 2021. Year-to-date, transit robberies are at the lowest levels in recorded history, officials said.

August also saw a record-low number of burglaries, while retail theft declined 22%, officials said.

“As August closed, we continued to break more records: shooting incidents and shooting victims for the first eight months of the year were at their lowest levels in recorded history, and crime in our subways in August was at the lowest in recorded history,” Mayor Adams said.

“But even with the tremendous steps we’ve taken in making our city safer, we know that one crime is still one crime too many, and a number of heartbreaking incidents remain at the forefront of people’s minds. We see so much promise in New York City, and it is readily apparent that our public safety plan is working. We will continue to make adjustments as we see spikes, but thanks to the brave men and women of the NYPD, New York continues to be America’s safest big city.”

The report was good news for Adams, who is locked in a tough reelection battle, and is beating back overtures from President Trump, who has suggested sending federal troops to New York City to help fight crime as he did last month in Washington, D.C.

The new numbers also follow a spate of gun violence in the Bronx that prompted Adams recently to announce that 1,000 additional cops were being assigned to the crime-racked borough and that efforts would be made to reach out to the “gang members, the shooters, the trigger pullers…[to]…end this violence.”

Adams has touted law enforcement’s anti-gang efforts for removing guns from the street. So far this year, NYPD detectives have carried out a record-high 55 gang-related takedowns — arresting 396 gang members and associates, officials said.

NYPD officials said the department also hired 1,100 police officer recruits in August, marking the largest class of officers sworn in by the NYPD since January 2016.

So far this year, the NYPD has hired 2,911 recruits — the highest number since 2006 — with another class still scheduled for this year.

In 2025, the department is on pace to hire the greatest number of new NYPD officers in recorded history, Adams said.

Officials also patted themselves on the back for a decline in retail theft, the kind of crimes that have frustrated customers at places like Walgreens, where basic items like shampoo, toothpaste and Tylenol are now often under lock and key.

According to the data, retail theft was down 12% for the first eight months of the year, and 22% in the month of August.

Officials said they have attacked the retail theft trend by having more officers on foot patrol, and by coordinating with transit cops, who catch shoplifters fleeing in the subways.

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