Homicides in big cities kept declining in Q1 of 2025, stats show
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Police in Washington, D.C. investigate a suspected homicide on January 30, 2025. Photo: Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images
Preliminary data show homicides in the nation's largest cities fell by 21% in the first three months of 2025 from the same period of last year, as overall violent crime continued its post-pandemic drop.
Why it matters: Stats compiled by the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) indicate that the COVID-era crime wave has almost faded away — even as some officials, including President Trump, falsely claim that immigrants are driving increased crime rates.
The big picture: Violent crime, especially homicides, spiked during the final year of Trump's first term and during Joe Biden's first two years as president. Since then, they've been dropping dramatically, an Axios review of MCCA data shows.
- Overall, violent crimes — robberies, rapes and aggravated assaults — decreased by an average of 14% in the first quarter of this year, reports from police departments in 68 cities indicate.
Many cities have had significant drops in homicides so far this year.
- Dallas has seen a 44% decline. Denver (58%), Honolulu (82%), Minneapolis (54%) and Philadelphia (28%) were among the cities showing notable drops.
- The data didn't include New York City, the nation's largest city, which didn't submit crime numbers. New York releases crime stats on its own website, where it reported a 34% drop in homicides in the first quarter of 2025.
The intrigue: Aurora, Colo., a Denver suburb that Trump singled out as being overrun by Venezuelan gangs, saw a 36% decline in homicide in early 2025. That followed a 5% drop in 2024 compared to the previous year, according to the MCCA.
- Trump repeatedly claimed during the 2024 campaign that migrants from Latin America, Africa and the Middle East were driving big jumps in violent crimes.
Reality check: Study after study has indicated that immigrants — those in the U.S. legally, and those who aren't — commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. citizens.
- 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.
- Another study of 15 cities by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF), a group that defends officers facing prosecution, says "repolicing" and stepped up arrests help drive down homicides.
Yes, but: A few cities did have large jumps in homicides in the first three months of 2025, the MCCA data show.
- Fort Worth, Texas, saw a 112% spike in homicides. Houston had a 21% increase and Kansas City saw a 31% jump.
