Early data show homicides dropped 16% in 2024
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Preliminary data show homicides in the nation's largest cities fell by 16% in 2024 from the previous year, and overall violent crime appears to have dropped as well.
Why it matters: Stats compiled by the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) suggest that the COVID-era crime wave all but evaporated during President Biden's final year in office, even as Donald Trump's claims that crime was rising became a key part of his winning election strategy.
Zoom in: Violent crime, especially homicides, rose during Biden's first two years as president before dropping dramatically the next two years, the MCCA data show.
- An Axios analysis of the preliminary crime data for 2024 from 69 self-reporting large police departments found that violent crimes decreased overall by 6%.
- Overall, robberies (9%), rape (6%), and aggravated assaults (5%) all declined, the Axios analysis found.
Many cities had significantly larger declines in homicides. They dropped 35% in Boston and New Orleans, 26% in Cleveland and Dallas, 34% in Philadelphia and 32% in Washington, D.C.
- One caveat: The data from cities didn't include New York City, the nation's largest city, which didn't submit crime numbers. The city releases crime stats on its own website and has reported declining crime in 2024.
The intrigue: During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly made false claims that migrants from Latin America, Africa and the Middle East were driving big jumps in violent crimes.
- Trump singled out Aurora, Colo., saying the Denver suburb was being overrun by Venezuelan immigrant gangs. The MCCA stats indicate homicides declined in Aurora by 5% last year, compared to 2023.
- Phoenix, another city targeted by conservatives as being besieged with violent crime because of undocumented immigrants, had a 28% decline in homicides last year.
Zoom out: Overall, the Axios analysis found that homicides dropped 24% from 2020 (the first nine months of the pandemic and Trump's last year in office) to 2024.
- Over those four years, overall violent crime decreased by 10%. Robberies dropped 10% and aggravated assaults fell 3%. Rapes increased by 3%, however.
A few cities did have large jumps in homicides in 2024 compared to 2020, the MCCA data show.
- Those cities included Albuquerque (20%), Austin, Texas (41%) and Oklahoma City (70%), an Axios review found.
The bottom line: Early numbers show Trump returned to office with lower violent crime rates — especially homicides — than when he left the presidency in January 2021.
- There's no evidence undocumented immigrants during Biden's term were behind a surge in violent crime.
- A report in December found that the homicide surge of 2020 was primarily driven by men and teen boys who were laid off or saw their schools close during pandemic shutdowns.
