Crime decreased in every category in 2024, including murder, violent crime and motor vehicle thefts, according to data released by the FBI on Tuesday. It reflects a trend experts have been tracking as reported numbers of violent crimes continue to drop from a spike immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic.
While the report included good news, a violent crime still occurred on average every 25.9 seconds in the United States last year, according to the FBI’s annual Unified Crime Report, which compiles crime statistics submitted by law enforcement agencies across the country. This year’s report used data submitted by 16,675 different agencies, which the FBI said covers a combined population of more than 325 million people, or about 95.6% of U.S. residents.
The FBI’s report did not venture to say why the violent crime stats decreased. “It’s difficult if not impossible for us to say why, and each reporting agency would have a different reason why,” an FBI official said Tuesday in response to a question from CBS News during a briefing.
The FBI did note it has seen an increase in the number of officers shot in the line of duty. “Between 2021 and 2024, we saw 258 law enforcement officers feloniously killed in the line of duty,” the FBI official said.
All violent crime decreased last year
Violent crime, which the FBI defines as murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, was down an estimated 4.5% in 2024 compared to 2023, with each subcategory also seeing a decrease.
The murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate decreased 14.9% year over year. Robbery dropped by 8.9%. Rape saw an estimated 5.2% decrease and aggravated assault was down 3%, the report found
The murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate dropped for a second straight year, after dropping from 6.5 to 5.7 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023. In 2024, the rate dropped again, to 5 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. Over the last 20 years, the high mark in the murder rate was recorded in 2020, with 6.7 per 100,000 residents, while the lowest recorded was in 2014, with 4.4 cases per 100,000 people.
Analysis from Jeff Asher, a criminal justice data expert and co-founder of consulting firm AH Datalytics, noted that while murder, rape and robberies have fallen to below pre-COVID levels following a large spike during the pandemic, aggravated assaults, while decreasing, remain “stubbornly high.”
In a shift from previous years, both the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office contributed data to the FBI report.
LAPD Chief of Detectives Alan S. Hamilton credited community and violence intervention programs in Los Angeles for contributing to the drop in crime there. “We made an investment in the future and I think these are the dividends,” he told CBS News in a phone call Monday night.
Rodney Harrison, former police commissioner of New York’s Suffolk County and a CBS News law enforcement contributor, said some of the drops in violent crime could be attributed to criminals shifting their efforts to online crimes like identity theft.
“If they don’t have to go out on the street and run drugs and can make money sitting at the computer, some criminals will do that, which presents a new challenge to police,” Harrison told CBS News.
Property crime also down
Property crime also saw a considerable decrease of 8.1% in 2024, the FBI report found, following a 2.4% drop in 2023.
Of note, motor vehicle thefts decreased by 18.6% from 2023 to 2024 following several years of increases. It’s the largest one-year drop ever recorded in that category, although the overall rate of car thefts is still higher than it was in 2019, according to Asher.
Other subcategories of property crime include burglary, down 8.6%, and larceny-theft, down 5.5%.
The overall property crime rate in 2024 was the lowest recorded since 1961, according to the Council on Criminal Justice.
Hate crimes
The FBI also included data on hate crimes, based on reports from 16,419 law enforcement agencies. In 2024, those departments reported 11,679 criminal incidents and 13,683 related offenses motivated by bias based on race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender or gender identity.
The overall number of such incidents decreased slightly in 2024 compared to 2023, although the FBI noted there can be fluctuations when looking at different groups.
While the FBI report did not give a breakdown of the targets of hate crimes, CBS News has been tracking an increase in reported antisemitic hate crimes in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack in Israel and the subsequent Israeli military operation in Gaza. Anti-Muslim hate crimes have also been on the rise in the same time period.
The Secure Community Network, which helps to track antisemitic incidents across the country, said roughly 69% of the reported religiously motivated incidents in 2024 were antisemitic, targeting Jewish people or institutions.
Downward trend continuing
While the FBI’s report is focused on 2024, statistics for the current year are available and show a continuing downward trend, according to analysis from the Council on Criminal Justice.
The homicide rate continued to decline in the first half of 2025, lowering the rate in the U.S. to a level it hasn’t seen in a decade, the CCJ said. Although the group noted that while the overall numbers are going down, many cities are still seeing higher homicide rates than they did in the first half of 2019.
“These numbers are promising but not surprising,” Ernesto Lopez, senior research specialist at the CCJ, told CBS News. “After significant increases in violent crime starting in 2020, the decline in all major crime types across all sizes of jurisdictions is promising. These trends are closely aligned with our own findings, which show crime falling last year and continuing to fall in the first six months of 2025.”
The council also noted the limitations of the FBI’s data, which doesn’t cover the entire U.S. population and only measures crimes that are reported to law enforcement. Advocates for victims of sexual assault, for example, often note that many rapes go unreported.
“The police data is critical, but it’s also important to remember that most crimes are not reported to police, so the overall volume is much higher than what’s represented here,” the CCJ told CBS News.
Jacob Rosen
contributed to this report.