Philadelphia is on track to record its lowest number of annual homicides in six decades, as well as declines in shootings, assaults, retail thefts and most other serious crimes compared to last year.\n<\/p>\n
The Philadelphia Police Department reports there were 220 homicides in 2025 as of Tuesday night, fewer than the most recent low of 246 in 2013. The count hasn\u2019t been so low since 1966, when there were 178 homicides.\n<\/p>\n
The figures extend a local and national trend of declining crime<\/a> since the pandemic-era peak in 2021, when 562 people were killed in Philadelphia.\n<\/p>\n District Attorney Larry Krasner attributed the continued drop to several factors, including the work of his office\u2019s gun violence task force, which focuses on arresting shooting suspects and reducing the number of illegal firearms on the streets. The task force works with the state attorney general, the PPD and federal law enforcement agencies, he said.\n <\/p>\n The DA\u2019s office shares its forensic and investigative resources \u201call the time with PPD, all the time with FBI, ATF, DEA. We crack phones, we look at cameras,\u201d he said at a press conference Wednesday. \u201cWe have social media analysts, just as the Philadelphia Police Department does. We work closely, and this is how you get it done.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Krasner at the same time acknowledged the ongoing toll of gun violence in the city and the pain suffered by the hundreds of families who still lose loved ones every year.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThere is nothing to celebrate about 220 people losing their lives to homicide, others suffering terrible losses from shootings, from sexual assaults and from other heinous crimes,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to celebrate there, but certainly we\u2019re happy at how many people have not been victimized.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Progress despite poverty and firearms<\/p>\n Krasner highlighted the drops in several categories of crime compared to 2024. Gun robberies are down 22% for the year, aggravated assaults with a gun fell 14%, home burglaries 11% and retail theft 12%, according to PPD data.\n<\/p>\n Shooting incidents decreased 29% from last year, to 826 shootings, and the number of shooting victims recorded fell by 16%, to 906 people.\n<\/p>\n A notable exception to the downward trend was rape, which rose 8% compared to 2024. Thefts from people (as opposed to thefts from autos) jumped 22%, which Krasner attributed to a rise in \u201cscams.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Philadelphia City Councilmember Curtis Jones said a collaborative focus among elected officials and agency heads on stopping gun violence has played a key role in improving safety.\n<\/p>\n \u201cIn the last administration to now, people are in rooms pointing at problems, trying to point at solutions, as opposed to pointing at each other, blaming them,\u201d Jones said. \u201cI see the difference.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Krasner noted that crime overall has continued falling despite Philadelphia\u2019s status as one of the poorest big cities in the country<\/a>, and what he described as \u201cterrible\u201d permissive state gun laws<\/a>, compared to New York and New Jersey.\n<\/p>\n \u201cHow is that happening when we are dragging this enormous bag of sand of poverty, and this enormous bag of sand of access to guns?\u201d he asked.\n<\/p>\n