NYPD keeps mum on key felony assault specifics

New York City Police Department maintains stubborn radio silence in face of inquiry seeking clarity on sources of massive rise in felony assaults as compared with 2019. Claimed “main drivers” may be true, but NYPD provides no data to check. City Council Public Safety Committee holding hearing on crime statistics on Sept. 16.

Sept. 15, 2026 — On Sept. 3, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) put out its periodic press release on major crimes, trumpeting both a decrease in major crimes in Aug. 2026 of 6.6 percent compared with Aug. 2025, and a 2026 year-to-date reduction of 6.2 percent compared with the same period for 2025.

The outlier was felony assault, a monthly year-over-year increase of 3.1 percent, and a 2026 year-to-date increase over 2025 of 0.7 percent. The context for felony assault is a massive increase since pre-pandemic days. Felony assaults for the full 2025 year were 29,838, whereas the count for the full 2019 year was 20,698. The movement from 2019 to 2025 represents a 44.2 percent increase in felony assaults, prior to this year’s marginal additional increase.

In a post on X, I had quoted a Vital City email describing the trend (full Vital City article here), and got a reply post from Yale Law professor David Schleicher that seemed intended to counter the idea that there was a general increase in felony assault: “Most of the increase in felony assaults is domestic violence and assaults on gov’t officials (police and others),” it was said, quoting an NYPD press release from early June.

So I took a look at NYPD’s June 3 release (addressing May 2026 data), and, indeed, these factors are the ones that NYPD was putting forward as the “drivers” of the increase in felony assault:

Over the past several years, there has been an increase in felony assaults, and the main drivers of those increases are domestic incidents (54% increase since 2020), assaults on police officers (103% increase since 2020), and assaults on other government workers (200% increase since 2020).

Independent of whether these subcategories are the “drivers” of the overall increase in felony assaults, Council Member Oswald Feliz, chair of the New York City Council’s Committee on Public Safety, says that the specific increases, “without a question,” are negative developments, and will be inquired into at a hearing that the Public Safety Committee is holding tomorrow, Sept. 16, at 1:00 pm. 

But what struck me even more was that the Department neither provided a baseline count of the specified sub-categories, nor any information about the balance (other felony assaults). Determining how much the unspecified felony assaults went up seems important.1

If, for example, the overall (unspecified) felony assaults went up by only 5.0 percent from 2019 to now, that is still movement in the opposite direction from other major crimes, but not a shockingly large increase. If, on the other hand, the unspecified felony assaults still shows an increase of 20 or 25 percent, that would be very alarming indeed.

So, I sent my first email to the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information (DCPI) on Sept. 3. I provided the link to the release, quoted the relevant paragraph cited above, and asked:

(1) Are your 2020 numbers full year numbers or YTD. 

(2) If YTD, I assume you’re comparing 2020 YTD with 2026 YTD, correct? 

(3) If 2020 full year, what are you comparing to? Full year 2025? 

(4) However you’re doing it, please provide the raw numbers underlying the three percentage increase sub-categories, and the raw numbers for ALL felony assaults. 

(5) If available, please also provide sub-categories for 2019 (either full year or YTD, depending on how you’re doing it).

Not getting a response, I called DCPI on Sept. 4. After not getting an answer a couple of times, an officer picked up. When I explained my inquiry, she said she could not address it and the only way to proceed was to follow-up with additional emails.

Which I’ve done several times.

Still radio silence.

Asked about the data I sought, Feliz agreed that they seemed like a very important thing to know. He said, “We’ll be asking about all of that tomorrow,” agreeing with the proposition that having data is a prerequisite to being able to fix things.

Speaking of felony assaults more generally, Feliz said of the Sept. 16 hearing, “We want to know the specifics related to the data, but also what are some of the challenges that our city is facing that has led to that increase, and also what steps can we take to bring the numbers down.”