US poised to see dramatic drop in homicides for 3rd straight year

Homicides in the United States will decline for the third year in a row as 2024 winds down, boosting the nation’s fortunes. annual number of murders down to levels not seen before the pandemic, according to preliminary data from both large and small cities.

Based on crime statistics available from U.S. law enforcement agencies, the year is expected to end nationwide with a nearly 16 percent drop in homicides and a 3.3 percent drop in overall violent crime, national crime analyst Jeff Asher told ABC News.

The dramatic drop in homicides surpasses the 13% drop in 2023, then the largest drop on record. In 2022, the number of homicides across the country fell by 6%, according to the FBI.

Three consecutive years of declining homicides come on the heels of a 30% increase in homicides between 2019 and 2020, the largest single-year increase in more than a century.

“Considering where we were just three or four years ago, we’re basically seeing 5,000 fewer homicide victims in 2020, 2021 and 2022 than in 2024,” said Asher, co-founder and former crime analyst at AH Datalytics. The CIA and the New Orleans Police Department.

In contrast, a dozen major US cities He broke the record for murders of the year in 2021

Philadelphia — which had 562 murders in 2021, 516 in 2022 and an all-time high of 410 last year — saw a 40% drop in homicides in 2024.

Other large cities that have seen a significant reduction in homicides this year are New Orleans, down 38%; Washington, DC, down 29%; Memphis, Tenn., down 23%; Baltimore, 24% less; Kansas City, Mo., down 20%; and Los Angeles, down 15%.

New York City, the nation’s largest city, recorded 357 homicides through Dec. 15, a 7.3 percent decrease from 2023, according to New York Police Department crime statistics. The city — which counted 442 murders in 2020, a 45% jump from 2019 — saw a 15% drop in homicides over the past two years.

Chicago has seen a 7 percent drop in homicides through Dec. 15, compared to 603 at this time last year, according to Chicago Police Department crime data. Over the past three years, homicides in Chicago have dropped 29% after rising 55% between 2019 and 2020, with 769 murders.

Homicides in 63 cities with populations over 250,000 are down 15% this year, and homicides are down at least 19% in 246 cities with populations under 250,000, Asher’s research found.

“It’s a tremendous achievement to see how much homicides have gone down two years in a row,” Asher said.

Property crime is down

In addition to the decline in violent crime, property crime is also poised to end the year down 8.6 percent nationwide, largely due to a 21.4 percent drop in motor vehicle theft, Asher said.

“Car thefts were up 12% last year. They’re down more than 20% this year,” Asher said, adding that the rise in car thefts in 2023 appears to be linked to how-to videos on how to steal certain models on social media. Kias and Hyundais.

Crunching the numbers

Since 2016, Asher has crunched the numbers for a year-end report on crime trends. This year, its report is based on preliminary crime statistics from 309 U.S. law enforcement agencies, the most data it has ever collected.

Asher’s analysis is consistent with data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May showing a 14% drop in homicides. The Gun Violence Archive, a website that tracks all shootings nationwide, shows that homicides are down about 11 percent.

“We put all of that together and we see a very large drop in homicides, a very large drop in gun violence in the US in 2024 on top of a very large drop in homicides and a very large drop in gun violence in 2023,” Asher said.

Referring to overall violent crime, Asher said, “You’re probably looking at or near the lowest violent crime rate since 1970, if not the lowest.”

In addition to murder, rapes fell 4.5% from 2023, robberies fell 1.1% and aggravated assaults fell 3.7%, according to Asher.

The declining numbers come on the back of high levels of violent crime in 2024, including more than 400 mass shootings, two assassination attempts About President-elect Donald Trump and fatal shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson believes Luigi Mangione is a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate who police suspect was planning to strike fear into the insurance industry.

The numbers also come just days after a 15-year-old girl allegedly joined shooting massacre At his Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, he killed a teacher and a classmate and wounded six other students before fatally shooting himself, police said.

It came three months after the Wisconsin shooting of a 14-year-old boy presumed dead killed two students and two teachers, and injured nine others at a high school in Winder, Georgia, with an AR-style weapon his father had given him as a Christmas present.

‘We have reversed the trend against violent crimes’

At a Dec. 10 meeting of the Justice Department’s Violent Crime Reduction Steering Committee, Attorney General Merrick Garland said preliminary crime data showed a significant drop in violent crime in 85 cities in 2024, with a 17.5 percent drop in homicides nationwide.

“Over the last two years, we’ve reversed the trend against violent crime that went up during the pandemic,” Garland said.

He said the numbers are based on a historic drop in homicides nationwide last year, which he said was the lowest level of violent crime in 50 years.

Merrick attributed the drop in the violent crime rate in part to the DOJ’s Violent Crime Reduction Roadmap, which was created to help local jurisdictions develop, implement and evaluate strategies to intervene and respond to acts of gun violence in the community.

President Joe Biden’s administration has sought to curb gun violence through executive action in recent years and in 2022 signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which improved background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21, allocating $750 million to help states implement “red flag laws.” to remove firearms from people deemed a danger to themselves and others.

Biden also set the first in 2023 White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention focus on ways to help states and cities reduce the gun violence epidemic.

Some cities like Philadelphia have recognized the work of violence cessation programs, community-based initiatives that use peacebuilding methods to address violent incidents before they occur.

In Philadelphia, city leaders also announced a $184 million investment by 2022 in gun violence initiatives, including efforts to identify people at risk of engaging in violence, to provide mental health services or job placement services. While the city also increased the Philadelphia Police Department’s budget by $30 million that year, it implemented a violence prevention plan that combines law enforcement strategies, environmental improvements, and youth programs to reduce its homicide rate.

“We must continue to move forward with our comprehensive approach, which is prevention, intervention and enforcement,” Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said at a Nov. 1 news conference on the city’s declining homicide rate.

In October, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed six bills to strengthen New York’s gun laws, including one that requires gun dealers to post tobacco-style safety warnings and another that cracks down on illegal devices that turn semiautomatic weapons into automatic weapons. .

Asher said that when violent crime rose to alarming levels in 2020 and 2021, programs like community violence breakers were non-existent and many police departments were seeing budget cuts in the anti-police movement stemming from nationwide anti-police protests. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Asher said state and local governments, as well as philanthropies, are pouring money into programs to lower violent crime.

“Some of that is definitely contributing to what we’re seeing now,” Asher said. “I’m not naive enough to suggest that this is the full explanation. There are certainly a number of factors that contribute to this complex problem.”

ABC News’ Calvin Milliner contributed to this report.