Big Apple murder numbers are the lowest they’ve been in decades, but hate crimes are up almost 12% — nearly half of them listed as antisemitic incidents, NYPD brass announced Thursday.
There were 54 murders in the five boroughs through the first three months of the year, the lowest since the city started keeping track in the early 1990s and breaking the record low of 60 over the same time span in 2018, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said as she unveiled new crime stat numbers.
“Citywide, major crime dropped with over 1,400 fewer reported crimes compared to 2025, murders and shootings reached their lowest levels ever recorded for a first quarter, and our public housing developments had the safest start to the year for gun violence in history,” Tisch said.
“These results are driven by our precision policing strategy to go after guns, take down violent gangs, and put officers on foot posts where they are needed most,” she added.
The number of confirmed hate crimes in the city jumped from 128 over the first quarter of 2025 to 143 over the same period this year for an 11.7% increase — with 78 of the total described as anti-Jewish incidents, making up 55% of the total.
The largest percentage increase came in anti-Muslim increase, with 12 so far this year compared to just 5 over the first three months of 2025, or an increase of 140%.
“The hate crimes that we are seeing really vary across the board,” Tisch told reporters Thursday. “It could be something an act of violence. It could be drawing a symbol on a wall, like, for example, a swastika.”
She said the department is also changing how they list hate crimes, with two sets of statistics to reflect reported hate crimes and hate crimes confirmed by police.
“What I can tell you is that the NYPD has released this month the gold standard for data about hate crimes,” Tisch said. “We’ve done this in consultation with experts in the field, and that is data about reported crimes and data about confirmed crimes.”
She said rapes were up over the first quarter — 523 this year compared to 475 last year — which she attributed in part to a change in state law in 2024 that broadened the definition of rape.
Meanwhile, major crimes citywide dipped 5.3% over the first quarter of 2026 compared to last year, with 25,582 so far this year compared to 27,003 over the same period last year.
Tisch said the year started with a bump upward in subway crime, but the trend didn’t last.
“I believe in January and February, we did see an uptick in crime on our subways,” she said. “I believe a significant portion of that was related to adjustments that we made in our ejection strategy based on the Code Blue, based on the cold temperatures that we are seeing.
“We ended the quarter down, actually 1% in subway crime,” she added. “So we had a very good month of March. We basically brought crime fall in all categories in transit, and again, once the weather normalizes and we can go back to our normal ejection strategy in transit.
“We also added 150 officers to transit at the end of February, and those officers, I think, also made it.”
The stats also show that crime in public housing fell by 7.2% so far this year.
“The stories of these numbers in aggregate is one of remarkable progress,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Thursday. “They speak to an NYPD using every lever at its disposal to deliver a safer New York City to all who call it home.”
