Chicago Recorded Fewest Murders In 60 Years In 2025, Bucking Trump’s ‘Murder Capital’ Insult
CHICAGO — Throughout 2025, Chicago faced a barrage of attacks from President Donald Trump and other politicians painting the city as a murder-ridden hellscape needing federal — and even military — intervention.
Yet as the city brought the year to a close this week, it reported its lowest number of murders in more than half a century, according to preliminary data.
The 29 percent decrease in homicides in Chicago last year outpaced declines in other major cities like New York and Philadelphia. It also kept with a larger national trend in violence reduction that generally stood in stark contrast to the spikes experienced around the COVID-19 pandemic.
The city’s precipitous drop in murders came as other violent crime, such as robberies and carjackings, also went down sharply in Chicago, as did property crime like burglaries — what Mayor Brandon Johnson hailed this week as “one of the most transformative years in violence reduction in our city’s history.”
The 416 murders reported in the latest police data for 2025 — which will be finalized this month — marked the lowest annual number since 1965 and represented an almost 50 percent decline since 2021, when Chicago reported 805 murders.
Still, the city has been plagued by recent high-profile crimes that have gotten national attention, including a woman being lit on fire on the CTA’s Blue Line and two shootings Downtown following a Christmas tree lighting in November, one of which killed a 14-year-old boy.
Academics who study crime trends told Block Club that it’s difficult to definitively explain the ongoing drop in Chicago and across the country, but they did point to an influx of investment in violence prevention and social programs after the pandemic as one potential factor.
Andrew Papachristos, a Northwestern University sociology professor who studies gun violence and works with violence intervention groups, said the declines in Chicago murders should be seen in the context of a years-long trend that predates the pandemic or even 2016, when the city saw another major spike.
He hopes the current drop is representative of “moving the ceiling down, not the floor” of crime rates, particularly murders.
“In the 2000s, we sort of leveled off for a long period of time [around] 500 and 600 [murders]. And then there were ups and downs. 2012 was a bad year. Then we leveled off again. 2016 was a bad year, and then we started to see some gains,” Papachristos said. “I actually think we’re seeing a moving of the average these last five to seven years.”
The 416 murders in 2025 fall just short of the 425 reported in 2013 and 2014, according to the city’s violence reduction dashboard. That means last year saw the fewest murders since the 396 reported in 1965, according to the police department’s annual reporting.
Shootings also declined in 2025 by about 35 percent over 2024, and by almost 60 percent compared to 2021.
A large part of that drop was driven by a handful of community areas on the South and West sides that have typically seen some of the highest shooting rates in Chicago. Seven community areas, including North Lawndale, Austin, West Englewood and West Pullman, accounted for 35 percent of the total citywide decline in gun violence in 2025, according to a recent analysis by the University of Chicago Crime Lab.
In an interview with Block Club this week, Johnson pointed to a mix of investments under his administration as major factors he believes are contributing to the violent crime reduction.
That includes increased collaboration between the Chicago Police Department and community violence intervention programs, known as CVI, where organizations hire street outreach workers to deescalate conflicts and provide other resources.
The mayor also cited promotions of 50 more detectives in recent months and the expansion of mental health clinics and other resources.
“There’s still a lot more work to do, don’t get me wrong. By no means are we taking a victory lap,” Johnson said. “What my commitment and my drive is, is to double down on the efforts that have proven to be effective, to continue to save more lives and to create more opportunities for people.”
Police Supt. Larry Snelling was not made available for an interview in recent weeks, but during a press conference on Monday he touted his department’s work over the past year.
“Intelligence-driven policing, a leadership style amongst our command staff, where they lead from the front, and just bureaus working across with each other, building relationships with community members,” he said. “And then officer wellness. When our officers are doing better, we do better for others, so we just plan to continue that through 2026.”
In an interview last month with WGN News, Snelling also said charging and detention decisions by Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, who took office in December 2024, have contributed to the crime decline.
“By keeping those repeat offenders off the street, we’ve been able to keep down the shootings, the homicides, the robberies, the vehicular hijackings,” Snelling said.
Robberies also saw a major drop last year after sharply spiking in 2023, according to city data.
The numbers began to come down in 2024, a trend which continued in 2025, when Chicago saw about 6,100 robberies — an almost 50 percent drop from the 2023 peak and 2,000 fewer than 2019 levels.
Carjackings have also fallen by 50 percent since 2024.
Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks with Block Club Chicago in his ceremonial office at City Hall on Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025. Credit: Jeremy Battle/Block Club Chicago
Pointing to the “why” behind the decline in violent crime is complex, said Papachristos and Kim Smith, director of national programs and external engagement at the University of Chicago Crime Lab, in interviews last month.
“It’s not entirely clear what’s driving the decline,” Smith said. “If someone were to say definitively, I know ‘program x in city y’ is the thing that is contributing to this double digit decline over the past three years, we would want to make sure that we’re pressure testing that with the data.”
“Crime trends change at the same time that other things are changing in the world,” she added. “And in the last three, five years, a lot has changed.”
Papachristos said he’s looking at the role of increased investment in community violence intervention and other programs during and after the pandemic as a factor in the crime drop in Chicago, as well as more strategic policing and targeted arrests.
“It’s all intermixed, right? Because you do see these changes with policing, these changes with people going back to school, the economy was pretty good for a minute there,” Papachristos said. “All those things were kind of coming back online at the same time.”
For all the progress the city has made in bringing down crime numbers, Chicago still grapples with high levels of gun violence and other violent crime, including the high-profile CTA fire attack and Downtown teen shootings in November as well as daily shootings across the neighborhoods.
Domestic violence incidents also remain high. Fatal domestic shootings rose by 50 percent in 2025, with overall domestic homicides spiking by about 15 percent — one of the few crime categories that went up, not down.
CPD Supt. Larry Snelling speaks at the Chicago Police Department 1st District station, 1718 S. State St., — where a new Public Transportation Section Strategic Decision Support Center was just opened — in the South Loop on July 10, 2025. Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago
Johnson this week touted funding in the 2026 city budget for gender-based violence programs — which was fully restored by his administration after an initial proposal would have led to partial cuts — and also said he’s confident the upcoming state overhaul of the Chicago transit system will help further streamline CTA security measures.
The mayor also dismissed claims made by the Department of Homeland Security that credited its immigration enforcement raids this fall — known as Operation Midway Blitz — for contributing to the city’s violence decline.
“For the president to try to take credit for the work that community violence intervention workers are doing, to try and take credit for what our police department is doing, it’s really disrespectful, quite frankly,” Johnson said.
Continuing to build on 2025’s progress will largely depending on funding for violence intervention and other programs, experts said — a perennial issue with Chicago’s budget woes.
Smith said Chicago remains a hub for innovation in violence prevention and research, allowing for unique opportunities to evaluate specific programs and policies that aren’t available elsewhere.
But sustained investment for violence prevention — especially with federal pandemic relief dollars drying up — remains a major challenge, she said.
“We’re moving in the right direction with respect to violent crime in the city. We unfortunately were not starting from a good place. Relatively speaking, we’re still not among the safest cities in the country,” Smith said. “We still have a long way to go when we compare ourselves to our peers, and I think it’s going to be difficult in the coming years if we are not really thoughtful about the investments that we’re going to make in violence prevention.”
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