MANAGEMENT UPDATE.

HISTORIC DROP IN MURDERS: A TALE OF A DOZEN CITIES

Reliable final figures on 2025 murder rates in the nation’s large cities won’t be public until the FBI releases its analysis later this year, but crime analyst Jeff Asher, co-founder of data analytics firm, AH Datalytics, reported on January 12 in the Jeff-Alytics Substack that “last year was a historic year in terms of the nation’s murder rate (and) the third straight year of record declines.”

To show the extent of the drop, Asher presents bar charts for a dozen cities that recorded historic lows in terms of the number and rate of murders in their borders in calendar year 2025. These charts portray year-by-year murder counts that stretch back, at least, to the 1960s.

Here is his list of a dozen cities, which we are presenting in alphabetical order, with data pulled out of his bar charts on Substack. The cities vary in size from the smallest, Richmond, California, with a population of about 115,000, to Chicago with 2.7 million. [Note that the 2025 data is almost, but not quite complete. For eight of these cities, data was only available through December 28, 2025, and for four of them through December 14.]

Baltimore. In 2025, 133 murders occurred in Maryland’s largest city. That was the lowest number since 1965 when there were 129. The highest count was 353 in 1993.

Bridgeport. The largest city in Connecticut and one of the poorest had five murders in 2025. The lowest count previously was three in 1960. The high was 60 in 1993.

Chicago. There were 416 murders in 2025, the lowest number since there were 395 in 1965. The high was 970 in 1974.

Detroit. There were 165 murders in Detroit in 2025, the lowest number since 1964 when there were 125. The highest murder count was 714 in 1974.

Fresno. Like many cities, the drop in murders since the pandemic has been large. The 22 murders in 2025 represented a 70 percent decrease since 2020 and a 27 percent drop since 2024. The murder count in 2025 was the lowest since there were 14 in 1973. The highest murder count was 87 in 1993.

Modesto, CA. With a population of about 220,000, Modesto is the 19^th biggest city, but its population is still about 70,00 more than Bridgeport, the largest city in Connecticut. In 2025, there were no murders, which had last occurred in 1974. There were 16 in 2020, in line with a trend around the country in which pandemic-era violence was high, but Modesto also experienced higher murder rates in the years that followed the Great Recession. The highest murder count was 25 in 2015.

Newark. Thirty murders occurred in calendar 2025 in New Jersey’s largest city and one of its poorest. That’s the lowest number since 1956, when there were 26. The highest count was 163 in 1980.

Oakland. The seventh largest city in California (population about 445,000) had 58 murders in 2025, the lowest number since there were 48 in 1967. The highest number occurred in 1992 when there were 165.

Philadelphia. The murder count in 2025 was 220, the lowest number before that was 178 in 1966. The high occurred in 2020 with 575 murders.

Providence. Four murders occurred in Rhode Island’s capital in 2025, with the previous low occurring in 1962, when there were two. The highest count occurred in 1990 when there were 31.

Richmond, CA. Located in the San Francisco Bay area’s East Bay region, the City of Richmond experienced five homicides in 2025. The last time the homicide numbers were that low was in 1965. The highest number occurred in 1991 when there were 61 murders. (In 1991, the crime rate was seven times the national average and the population was 98,000, compared to about 115,000 in 2025.)

San Francisco. There were 28 murders in 2025, the lowest number since 1941 when there were 21 recorded. The high of 141 occurred in 1977.

Asher concludes his observations, noting that the murder count decline that he is citing is impressive “though one can rightly argue that there’s still more work to be done. And so we turn our attention to 2026 to see if any other historic lows can be achieved.”