Most, if not all, categories of crime fell in the city of Rochester last year, with many of the tallies hitting their lowest numbers in a decade.
That includes homicides, a category that peaked at 85 in 2021 and has dropped each year since. The Rochester Police Department recorded 36 homicides last year, a decrease of 11 compared to 2024. The 2025 number is largely in line with figures recorded prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, a period when the city and nation saw a spike in violent crime.
Along with homicides, the Rochester Police Department tracks and compiles numbers on several categories of crime, including shootings, aggravated assaults, robberies, and property crimes. The department and Mayor Malik Evans plan to address the approved numbers in a news conference next week.
Rochester is not alone in seeing a spike in homicides during the pandemic. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, homicides increased nationwide by about 36% between 2019 and 2021, from 19,141 to 26,031.
Gun violence in the city has had a profound decrease since its peak in 2021. That year, 419 people were shot in the city, 57 of them fatally. The number has dropped consistently since then, to 162. Twenty-four people were shot to death in the city in 2025. Those numbers are largely in line with the trend pre-pandemic.
But still, earlier this month Evans renewed the city’s Gun Violence State of Emergency for another 30 days. Former Mayor Lovely Warren first enacted the state of emergency, and Evans has continued it for the entirety of his four-year tenure as mayor.
The state of emergency gives the administration some expanded power to address perceived hotspots of violence, such as the ability to shutter businesses.
“Our goal is to get to functional zero as it relates to gun violence in Rochester, New York,” Evans said during a November news conference. “That’s going to take time, it’s going to take education, and it’s going to take work, but I know together, we can get there.”
Shootings and homicides were not the only crimes that declined in 2025. Reported property crimes, the most common type of crime in the city, hit a 10-year low last year. Motor vehicle thefts, which saw an extraordinary spike in 2023 due to the ease of stealing KIAs and Hyundais, remained high, but have declined significantly since that peak.
And other categories of violent crime declined from previous years. Aggravated assaults were one exception. Their numbers peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic and have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Police recorded 828 aggravated assaults last year, down from the 2021 high of 990.The lowest numbers of the past decade occurred in 2016, when police tallied 602.
For Willie Lightfoot, the former Rochester City Councilmember and founder of the ROC Against Gun Violence Coalition, those numbers reflect some hope that progress is being made. He also said it's not enough.
“I have a laundromat on Jefferson Avenue,” Lightfoot said. “I close my laundromat at five o'clock in the afternoon. That's ridiculous for a business like that. That business should be 24 hours. It could be open to 9, 10 o'clock at night. I do that because I don't feel safe. My customers don't feel safe.”
Lightfoot is a native of the Jefferson Avenue neighborhood, a part of the city which has long struggled with violent crime. He said the lived experiences of its residents make statistics sometimes ring hollow.
“People's perception doesn't match the numbers,” Lightfoot said. “To me, that's an area of improvement that all of us, meaning those that work in the space of gun violence and preventing violence in the community, and the government, and the police, everybody, where we can do a better job. Because people don't feel that safe, they don't feel these numbers. When they see that on TV, they go, ‘Okay, yeah, that looks good, but that's not how I feel. I’m still not letting my kids go play at the park.’”
“People’s perception is reality,” he continued.
