Murders in California and Los Angeles fall to record lows – CalMatters

from Nigel DuaraCalMatters

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California’s homicide rate hit a new record low last year, part of a continuing national homicide decline that set historic lows in major cities and reversed a three-year surge in homicides linked to the pandemic.

Issued by the prosecutor’s office Crime statistics for 2025 on Wednesday morning and said California’s homicide rate of 3.5 per 100,000 people was the lowest since 1966, the year the national homicide rate began to climb above 5.1 per 100,000 and the earliest homicide rate records kept by the state.

Crime data analysts say there are several factors contributing to the decline, but there is no clear reason why the numbers are down as significantly as they are.

“At this point, with the homicide rate about 18 percent below pre-pandemic levels and the lowest reported in at least 40 years, additional contributing factors beyond a return to normal are likely to play a role,” said Magnus Lofström, criminal justice policy director at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California think tank.

“It’s not clear what they are, but the ability of law enforcement to solve murders may be.”

In Los Angeles, which had significant presence of federal law enforcement for at least one month last year, homicides were down in three of the four LAPD bureaus. The city’s homicide rate fell to 5.9 per 100,000 people, the city’s lowest rate since 1959, according to the police department annual crime report.

The drop in homicides in the state’s largest city reflects a broader national trend that has continued this year, what crime data analyst Jeff Asher this is the lowest homicide rate reported by the FBI in recent US history.

After years of decline, California’s homicide rate rose 31 percent in 2020 to 5.5 homicides per 100,000 people. In 2021, it rose again, to about 6 per 100,000 people.

But that trend began to reverse in 2022. By the end of 2024, California’s homicide rate had dropped to 4.3 per 100,000 people.

California’s Democratic leaders said statistics show their policies are succeeding, even as the declining homicide rate is in line with the national trend.

“These numbers demonstrate that the investments in community violence intervention in recent years and the commitment to effective partnership and collaboration between federal, state and local governments, law enforcement and community partners are working,” Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a news release.

At the same time, the number of murders was rising, the percentage of cases solved by the police was falling. The police department’s “clearance rate” compares the number of crimes reported to the number of arrests made, although rates can vary dramatically among police departments.

Those numbers began to recover as the homicide rate dropped. From 55% in 2021, the solved murder rate rose to 64% in 2024. Last year, the solved murder rate was 79%.

“The most surprising part of the 2025 crime data to me was the 15 percent increase in the homicide rate,” Lofstrom said. “This is very encouraging, but it will be important to unpack the remarkable jump to determine what efforts led to the striking improvement.”

Governor Gavin Newsom highlighted the results Wednesday morning, along with double-digit drops in the rates of robberies, auto thefts, property crimes and violent crimes overall.

“These results show that when we invest in our communities, support law enforcement, fight organized crime and expand prevention and intervention efforts, we can save lives and improve public safety,” Newsom said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.