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Headline Roundup May 20th, 2025

Data Suggests Violent Crime Is Down Nationwide

Summary from the AllSides News Team

Violent crime rates in the US have fallen, according to new data from multiple think tanks.

From The Left: Outlets from the left, like The Economist (Lean Left bias), The Atlantic (Left), and Slate (Left), highlighted new data from the Real-Time Crime Index. Real-Time found that murders have fallen in many of America’s most dangerous cities since 2021, with Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans seeing the biggest drops, around the 50% mark. The organization was launched in September 2024 and is led by Jeff Asher, who previously wrote for The New York Times (Lean Left).

From The Right: The Washington Examiner (Lean Right) highlighted new data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which said 68 of the US’s biggest cities reported an average decline in violent crime in the first four months of 2025. The Association reported an 11% nationwide drop in assaults, 20% drop in robberies, 14% drop in rapes, and 20% drop in murders. According to its site, the organization consists of “police executives representing the largest cities in the United States and Canada.”

Coverage Notes: Neither report was widely covered by outlets across the spectrum. The New York Post (Lean Right) reported that Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district has seen a 70% rise in crime since she took office in 2019.

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Featured Coverage of this Story

From the Left
Violent crime is falling rapidly across America
Violent crime is falling rapidly across America

Getty Images

Analysis

Take the subway to Upton, a station on Pennsylvania Avenue in West Baltimore, and when you emerge onto the street, you may think you have arrived in a scene of The Wire, an old hit HBO show. Young men hang around, a few hawking drugs. Speak to Malik, a 40-year-old man selling knock-off Ray-Bans from a bin bag, however, and you will quickly be disabused of the idea that nothing has changed. “Where you are standing, try about ten years ago, you couldn’t hear yourself think,” he says. “It was all guys shouting ‘red top’,...

Open on The Economist
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From the Left
The Good News About Crime
Opinion

You don’t hear a lot of good news these days, and you hear even less good news about crime. In fact, this is a consistent structural problem with crime reporting. When crime is rising, it gets a great deal of attention—following the old newsroom adage that “if it bleeds, it leads.”

Most news consumers are probably aware that starting in 2020, the United States witnessed one of the most remarkable increases in crime in its history. Murder rose by the highest annual rate recorded (going back to the start of reliable records, in 1960) from...

Open on The Atlantic
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From the Right
Big cities across US report decrease in violent crime during first quarter
News

New data show that 68 of the largest cities in the United States reported an average decline in violent crime in the first quarter of 2025.

The Major Cities Chiefs Association, which is comprised of law enforcement executives representing most major metropolitan areas, reported that homicides, rapes, aggravated assaults, and robberies declined in nearly every city. Assaults were down by 11% nationwide, robberies were down by almost 20%, rape decreased by 14%, and homicides were down by over 20%.

Open on Washington Examiner
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