New Orleans homicide rates at an all time low in first six months of the year

NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — Once known as the murder capital, New Orleans has reduced violent crime to new levels.

Since the beginning of the year, the city has had 54 murders, including the Bourbon Street attack. This is the fewest through the first six months of the year since 1960.

“Tremendous improvement since we had our peak and, 20, 22 we were the murder capital of the nation. And then, every year since then, there’s been a decline,” said political analyst Jeff Crouere.

AH Datalytics obtained the numbers, as founder Jeff Asher explains, since the 1960s New Orleans has been sending monthly data to the FBI.

“We’re able to build from 1960 to 2023, from the official data. And then we have or we’re able to track through data directly from an NPD, the monthly totals for 2024 and 2025,” said Asher.

The decline is part of a national trend with both believing several initiatives could have played a role.

“A great sign as far as, what the NOPD is doing. I also think Troop NOLA is a big part of this. The governor and the state police certainly have a role to play in this success story,” said Crouere.

“Increased spending at the federal level, that sort of trickles down to the local level and the state level increased hiring dramatically, increased construction, building neighborhood centers, social centers, funding programming,” said Asher.

NOPD is seeing a decline in almost every category of violent crime.

Croure hopes the news could help recruit more businesses and residents to the city.

“Great reduction in crime needs to be promoted. It needs to be used as a way to advertise that our neighborhoods are safer, that we want people back. We want, you know, productive, taxpaying citizens back. We want businesses back,” said Crouere.

Asher agrees this is good news, but one murder is too many.

He says everybody needs to differentiate the positivity of the trend and the negativity of the fact that this is still something that’s occurring too often.

“So I think that it’s a delicate balance to have to hopefully acknowledge the trend, learn from the trend, continue to improve the trend, while also acknowledging the terribleness of the level,” said Asher.

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