Crime & Law
Chicago Set to End 2025 With Fewest Homicides in Years After 30% Drop
(WTTW News)
Chicago is set to close out 2025 with a dramatic drop in homicides, even amid a repeated push by the Trump administration to deploy military troops into the city to address what they’ve called a “crime epidemic.”
According to city of Chicago data, there have been 411 homicides recorded between Jan. 1 and Dec. 27, a decline of 30% compared to the same time last year. With only a handful of days left before the calendar turns to 2026, the city is potentially on pace to see a historically low total.
In 2014, there were 420 homicides. While other years have been close to that mark, available CPD data shows there has not been a year with fewer than 420 recorded homicides in more than half a century.
The number of shootings (1,850 recorded in 2025) has dropped by 35%, while robberies (down 35%), carjackings (down 50%), aggravated assaults (down 19%) and total violent crime victimizations (down 23%) all saw double-digit year-over-year reductions, according to the city.
Crime victimizations have been trending downward throughout the year, as Chicago reported historic lows in several individual months. The 20 homicides recorded in April were the fewest for any month in Chicago since February 2015, while also marking the fewest for any April since 1962.
The 36 homicides recorded in May were also the fewest for Chicago in any such month since 2011, according to Chicago police data.
The city’s homicide rate peaked in the 1990s at almost 34 homicides per 100,000 residents, while this year’s rate fell to 14.6, according to a new report from the University of Chicago Crime Lab, which analyzed 2025 violent crime rates.
That rate remains well below other major cities like St. Louis (46.8), Detroit (24.2) and Baltimore (23.1), but remains higher than New York (3.4) and Los Angeles (7.7), according to the report.
The city is divided into 22 individual police districts, at least 85% of which saw reductions in gun victimizations in 2025, according to the Crime Lab. And the homicide rate for Chicago’s Black residents has plummeted from 80.4 per 100,000 residents in 2021 down to 39.5 this year.
However, that rate remains several times higher than the homicide rate for the city’s Latino (9.3) and white (1.8) residents.
Local officials have often pointed to increased investments in social services and wraparound services, as well as the work of harm reduction groups like the Peacekeepers program, with driving down violent crime this year.
Mayor Brandon Johnson and Police Superintendent Larry Snelling have also pointed to critical partnerships among city agencies and the communities they serve as well as improvements in officer wellness.
“When our officers are doing better, they do better for others,” Snelling said at an unrelated press conference Monday.
But Chicago isn’t alone in its violent crime declines this year, as similar trends have been seen in other major cities across the country this year.
“This raises a question about the degree to which the changes we’re seeing in Chicago are due to Chicago-specific factors versus things happening more broadly across American cities,” the Crime Lab report states.
Johnson on Monday noted that historically, Chicago has been out of sync with national trends in violent crime rates, where other peer cities have seen reductions while Chicago had not.
Now, he said, that is no longer the case.
“Clearly we are in a much stronger position because our reduction has been double the reduction in the national trend,” he said Monday.
Those significant declines come as President Donald Trump has throughout 2025 referred to Chicago as a crime-ridden “hell hole” as he’s repeatedly pushed to deploy National Guard troops into the city.
The Supreme Court put a stop to that effort last week, ruling in favor of Chicago and Illinois officials who sued to halt such a deployment and finding the Trump administration “failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois.”
Still, the Crime Lab noted, despite the dramatic declines seen in 2025, the rate of violent crime in Chicago “remains dramatically higher” compared to other major cities around the world.
“And Chicago, like most U.S. cities, must figure out a solution to this problem in the face of severe budget challenges as federal pandemic relief expires and downtown recovery continues to lag after COVID-19,” the Crime Lab report states.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
