Cops ended the first three months of the year by recording a 30% drop in homicides in the Big Apple, NYPD officials said Wednesday.
As of Tuesday, NYPD detectives had investigated 55 homicides across the five boroughs, a 30% drop from the 79 homicides investigated in the first three months of 2025, cops said.
Shootings in the city were also down by 5%, from 147 last year to 140.
When March ended, 164 people had been shot in the city, down eight from the first three months of 2025, or a drop of 5%, cops said.
NYPD officers investigate a fatal shooting in the 170th St. subway station on the B/D line on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, in the Bronx, New York. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
The drop in crime is a feather in the cap for NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who, in her 16 months as the NYPD’s top cop, has repeatedly trumpeted her precision-policing model to crimefighting, in which the department sends teams of cops to high-crime areas to tamp down violence.
Yet there were several high-profile killings over the last three months, including Monday’s murder of Edwin Guevarez, who was gunned down just steps from his East New York, Brooklyn home, the death of an elderly Air Force veteran who was pushed onto the tracks at a busy Upper East Side station and the murder of Uber driver, Issa Mbolo Isac, who was fatally shot in the head in what cops believe was a road rage incident after he got into a fender bender with his killer.
Mbolo Isac’s murder marked the city’s first homicide of the year.
Livery driver Issa Mbolo Isac was pronounced dead at the scene after he was found shot in the head on Morris Ave. in the Bronx on Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
As of Sunday, the Bronx was responsible for 21 of the city’s murders, or 40%. Queens came in second with 16, or about 30%. Only four murders have occurred in Manhattan this year.
Staten Island has seen no murders so far this year, cops said.
The Bronx was responsible for about a third of the city’s homicides last year, officials said.
Facing the ongoing violence in the city’s northernmost borough, Tisch announced in February that 200 additional officers will be assigned to the Bronx after it is divided into separate North and South borough commands this spring.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
Patrol boroughs are commands that oversee local police precinct operations. Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn have two patrol boroughs, while the Bronx and Staten Island have only had one.
“For too long, the Bronx has experienced more crime per capita than any other borough while operating under a structure that has not kept pace with the demands placed on it,” Tisch said, during her State of the NYPD address.
As of Sunday, overall crime in the city had dropped around 5%, down from 26,393 felony crimes at this point last year to 24,873, officials said.
Cops did see an 8% jump in rapes, from 470 to 508. NYPD officials have repeatedly said that the numbers of rape reports jumped after legislative changes made in 2024 broadened the legal definition of rape in New York State to includes more forms of sexual assault.
The department has yet to say how many of the new rape reports are attributed to that change.
Gun violence was down across the U.S. in 2025, with a 14% drop in shootings by the end of September compared with the same period last year, according to The Trace, which monitors shooting trends nationwide. Compared with 2021, shootings were down 30% nationwide last year.