New York City has just posted its safest first half of a year on record when it comes to gun violence and killings, according to new police data. The figures point to a broad and continuing decline in crime across the five boroughs.
The numbers came from the New York Police Department. Officials said the city recorded the fewest shooting incidents, shooting victims and murders for the first six months of any year in recorded history, a milestone announced as the department released its mid-year statistics.
The headline figure was on shootings. Police reported 322 shooting incidents from January 1 through June 30, edging below the previous first-half record of 337, which had been set in both 2018 and 2025.
The decline extended to the people harmed by that gunfire. The NYPD counted 381 shooting victims over the six months, down from the prior record of 397 set the year before, another all-time low for the period.
Perhaps most striking was the drop in killings. Murders fell to 122 in the first half of 2026, down sharply from 162 during the same stretch a year earlier, continuing a downward trend in the city's most serious crime.
The longer view shows how far the numbers have come. Comparing the first half of 2021 with 2026, shooting incidents fell from 737 to 322, shooting victims from 852 to 381 and murders from 229 to 122, roughly cutting each of those figures in half in five years.
Police said the improvement was not limited to gun violence. The city was also seeing declines across other major crime categories, part of a broader drop that officials pointed to as evidence of sustained progress on public safety.
The results were presented by the city's leadership as a marker of that progress, even as officials acknowledged there is more work ahead. With 2026 only halfway through, police said they would be working to hold on to the gains through the rest of the year.