Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and NYPD police commissioner Jessica Tisch appeared together for the first time Tuesday to extol the significant reduction in violent crime in the city in 2025.

But they also acknowledged troublesome trends in assaults on public officials and a rise in youth violence.

Speaking at NYPD headquarters in Manhattan, Tisch said that the crime tally for last year revealed it to be the safest year for gun violence in the modern era of police record-keeping, noting that homicides dipped to 305, among the three lowest tallies for murders since 1994. Shootings declined 24% year over year, to 688 from 904, police data showed.

Overall, serious crimes such as murder, rapes, robberies and assaults dropped about 2.7% to 121,542 from 125,026, with declines in all five boroughs. Those figures, though, are still well above the 95,000 recorded during the pandemic.

“These historic reductions in crime did not happen by chance or accident, they are the direct product of a deliberate, data-driven strategy,” Tisch said.

But at the same time, Tisch acknowledged that the number of felony assaults, particularly those on public officials, including police officers, and domestic violence incidents, increased some 0.4% compared to 2024. Tisch also noted that in 2025 about 14% of shooting victims were under the age of 18, a 5% increase over 2024.

Rapes, in part because of a change in state law that broadened the legal definition of rape to include additional forms of sexual assaults, increased 16% in 2025, with domestic violence rapes accounting for nearly half of all such reports citywide, Tisch noted.

Hochul applauded the safest year in subway crime in 16 years, excluding the pandemic, which she said was driven by her funding of police overtime, which she said the state would continue to fund this year.

Hochul also said she would be announcing as early as next week a plan to create safety cordons around houses of worship to prevent worshippers from being intimidated by protesters.

Mamdani, who initially spoke for only about four minutes, compared to Tisch’s nearly 24 minutes, made no new policy announcements but praised Tisch and the NYPD for the reductions in crime. He also said he planned to work with NYPD officials in connection with his proposed Department of Community Safety.

Mamdani’s campaign website said that department would “invest in citywide mental health programs and crisis response — including deploying dedicated outreach workers in 100 subway stations, providing medical services in vacant commercial units, and increasing transit ambassadors to assist New Yorkers on their journeys,” as well as expanding gun violence prevention programs and increasing funding to hate-crime prevention programs.

Anthony M. DeStefano

Anthony M. DeStefano has been a reporter for Newsday since 1986 and covers law enforcement, criminal justice and legal affairs from its New York City offices.