Homicides Drop at Record Rate in Trump’s First Year Back in Office

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President Donald Trump got an early Christmas gift this year — data showing the U.S. is set to close 2025 with a record decline in murders.

Homicides in America decreased by 19.8% this year, according to crime analyst Jeff Asher. 

He wrote on Substack on Monday that his research is based primarily on the Real-Time Crime Index, which collects monthly crime data from 570 law enforcement agencies nationwide. Asher said 2025 will be the third straight year murders have dropped at a record pace, after there was a 15% decline in homicides in 2024.

Asher noted the RTCI is usually off slightly from the official FBI crime stats — which won’t be released until 2026. But there is “sufficient information now to say what next year’s FBI crime estimates will say with fairly good confidence.”

He added there are other sources that indicate the murder rate is down big as well. Asher pointed to the Gun Violence Archive, which showed shootings are down 17% year-over-year and that fatal shooting are down 13%.

“The drop in crime in 2025 is very real and very large,” Asher wrote.

He said looking at several major cities drives the point home:

New Orleans is on pace for the fewest murders since 1970. New York City reported the fewest shootings ever recorded (though the start of recording is probably the 1990s). Numerous cities recorded the lowest murders through November since the 1960s, including Detroit (since 1964), Baltimore (1962), Philadelphia (1966), Oakland (1967), and San Francisco (likely since at least 1942).

Asher’s story said the RTCI — which “historically has accounted for around half of the murders” — showed there were 5,912 murders between January and October. That compares to 7,369 by the same point in 2024 and 8,520 in 2023; the recent peak was in 2021, when there were 10,016 murders through October.

Trump touts the need for “law and order” often in his rhetoric — like when he said there needed to be “vicious” law and order to punish the career criminal who murdered Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska aboard a Charlotte train in August.

Asher reported data showed a sharp drop for several other crime categories as well. That includes a 23.2% drop in motor vehicle theft, an 18.3% decline in robbery, and nearly 9% fewer rapes.