The drop in murders coincides with high-profile federal anti-crime initiatives.
The United States is on track for the largest one-year drop in murders ever recorded, crime data analysts say.
Preliminary data from the Real Time Crime Index, a project run by New Orleans–based consulting firm AH Datalytics that tracks national crime trends, show this week that the murder rate has fallen by nearly 20 percent from 2024 to 2025.
By comparison, the murder rate declined roughly 14 percent from 2023 to 2024.
The index, which compiles monthly data from around 570 law enforcement agencies across the country, shows that between January and October 2025 there were 5,912 murders in the United States, compared with 7,369 recorded during the same period in 2024.
The drop in murders in 2025 is “remarkably widespread geographically,” wrote AH Datalytics co-founder Jeff Asher. He noted that numerous cities—including Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Oakland—saw their lowest murder totals through November since the 1960s.
“Applying these declines, even conservatively, to the FBI’s crime rates since 1960 suggests the U.S. in 2025 likely had the lowest reported murder and property crime rates ever recorded by the FBI and the lowest violent crime rate since the late 1960s,” Asher said.
Some of the U.S. cities that have reported the most murders last year are now seeing especially sharp declines in murders. New Mexico’s Albuquerque, for instance, experienced a 32.3 percent drop in killings by the end of November, according to the index.
Baltimore, another city long associated with high levels of gun-related violent crime, recorded a 30.9 percent year-to-year decrease in murders. Atlanta saw a 26.2 percent decline, while Birmingham, Alabama, posted the steepest drop, with murders falling by 49 percent.
The positive trend extends to several major cities that have been the focus of high-profile federal anti-crime operations. President Donald Trump, who has made restoring law and order a centerpiece of his second term, has directed federal agencies and the military to take a more aggressive role in combating violent crime and intervening in cities with elevated homicide rates.
By Bill Pan
