Leaving aside domestic incidents, and assault on police officers and other government workers, the overall increase in felony assaults as measured comparing 2019 with 2025 would have been 39.8 percent (not 44.2 percent). Not very reassuring.
Oct. 2, 2026 — Major crimes in New York City have been going down, including murders, which are at or near a historic low. The outlier is felony assault. Those complaints for the full 2025 year were 29,838, compared to 20,698 in 2019, the last full year before the Covid pandemic. The movement from 2019 to 2025 represents a 44.2 percent increase in felony assaults, prior to this year’s marginal additional increase.
Back in June, NYPD described the “drivers” of the increase in felony assault as follows: “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).”
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.
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.
The office of the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information (DCPI) failed to respond to multiple requests I made for additional information.
Assisted by AI in the scraping of data and its organization into a spreadsheet, I used three sources of data. The source that is probably most familiar is the year-end CompStat totals, which include felony assaults (not disaggregated by subcategory) as one of the seven major felony offenses reported. The second source of data is the separately reported data on domestic felony incidents, data which includes information on domestic felony assaults. The third source of information is from New York City’s Open Data Portal, specifically the historic complaint dataset.
Please review the linked notes about the methodology I used.
2019 versus 2025
When I originally reviewed NYPD’s press release, I thought it was odd that NYPD had used 2020 as its base year. For a variety of reasons, 2020 — the first year of the Covid pandemic — was aberrational. It seemed instead that 2019, the last full year that predated the pandemic was a more sensible baseline.
The table below breaks down the subcategories and then, subtracting them from the totals, shows “all others.” The variation between the CompStat and Open Data counts and percentages for all others reflects the fact that CompStat freezes annual data for a year as of mid-January of the following year, whereas Open Data’s information continues to be updated.
It is true — and disturbing — that the three subcategories cited as “drivers” of the increase in felony assaults each rose very substantially. Combined together, they increased 48.7 percent from 2019 to 2025. But all other felony assaults rose in that period in the range of from 39.8 percent (using CompStat totals) to 37.2 percent (using Open Data totals).
So, applied to change from 2019 to 2025, NYPD could have legitimately said that its three specified subcategories rose at a higher rate than all other felony assaults, but that both sets of felony assaults rose dramatically. But the three specified subcategories as the “drivers” of the increase is quite misleading.
| Increases in NYC felony assaults, by type, 2019–2025 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | 2019 | 2025 | Increase | % increase | |
| Domestic | 8,305 | 12,012 | 3,707 | 44.6% | |
| Police/peace officers | 1,540 | 2,538 | 998 | 64.8% | |
| Other government workers | 327 | 576 | 249 | 76.1% | |
| All 3 NYPD-specified types | 10,172 | 15,126 | 4,954 | 48.7% | |
| All others (CompStat) | 10,526 | 14,712 | 4,186 | 39.8% | |
| All others (Open Data) | 10,726 | 14,715 | 3,989 | 37.2% | |
| Total, CompStat | 20,698 | 29,838 | 9,140 | 44.2% | |
| Total, Open Data | 20,898 | 29,841 | 8,943 | 42.8% | |
What about change in share?
The point is underlined when looking at the change in the share of all felony assaults that each subcategory or group of subcategories comprises. If domestic incidents, assaults on police officers, or other government workers were “driving” the increase, one would expect significant increases in the share of all felony assaults coming from one or all of those subcategories. But that is not what the data show. From 2019 to 2025, changes in share were modest. This first table uses the Open Data total for all felony assaults.
The subcategories specified by the NYPD went up 2.0 points, and all others went down by 2.0 points, but they are still basically equally split. Ditto for the changes when looked at using the CompStat total for all felony assaults (the second table). Again, the term “drivers,” one commonly understood as “main reasons for” simply doesn’t fit the data.
What says the NYPD?
Still nothing.
What about the 2020 to 2025 comparison that NYPD used?
On their face, the data are more forgiving of NYPD using the term “drivers” for this comparison, although “all other” felony assaults still clocked an increase of between 30 and 33 percent — very substantial in anyone’s book. The three sub-categories as aggregated went up much more than that (about 59 percent) and the shift in share was more pronounced than with the 2019 to 2025 comparison (more than twice the shift).
But there is a specific reason for the movement observed. Remember lockdown? Remote schooling? More limited public activity and interaction well after lockdown? Well, one might hypothesize that as an environment in which felony assaults on police officers and other government employees would go down, and even one where more incidents of domestic violence might go unreported.
Indeed, the 2020 data showed a drop in all of those subcategories (aggregated, a drop of 6.4 percent, including an eye-raising drop of 17.4 percent in felony assaults on police officers). In other words, NYPD’s “drivers” analysis depends on using as a base a year in which the “drivers” were depressed. By doing that, you artificially inflate the extent of change in the “drivers” between the base year and a year (2025) that does not have abnormal conditions.
Why NYPD used 2020, I do not know.
No explanation means limits to accountability
In examining the data, I was able to approximate the magnitude of NYPD’s claimed increase from 2020 to 2025 in domestic incidents and assaults on police officers. On the other hand, the increase I calculated for “other government workers” was much lower than NYPD’s. That may be a function of the component parts of that subcategory (an extremely small share of all felony assaults).
The issue underlines a problem with NYPD’s failure to provide clarity. It may well be that NYPD recited a percentage increase for felony assaults on government workers (or any other subcategory) that was entirely correct. But a problem of NYPD’s public presentation is that it did not document how it calculated any of the subcategories, confounding an attempts to replicate it precisely. (In comparison, I have been transparent about methodology so that, among other things, the public can see what our tables are based on and others can identify any errors in classification I’ve made).