Violent crime in Nashville is down nearly 10 percent as the halfway point of 2025 nears, with reports of homicide, rape, street robberies and aggravated assaults all coming in less frequently than last year according to the latest Metro data. Property crime rates have also fallen, with home burglaries in particular down more than 27 percent.
The data is positive, but not easy to interpret or tie to specific local policies. It follows a national trend showing crime rates that surged amid the COVID-19 pandemic and have plummeted as it has receded. AH Datalytics co-founder and crime analyst Jeff Asher wrote last week, with some caveats, that “available data from 2024 and the first third of 2025 suggests a strong possibility that the United States will report the lowest murder rate ever recorded, the lowest property rate ever recorded, and the lowest violent crime rate since 1968.” In Nashville, the falling crime rates come even as the Metro Nashville Police Department was still 100 officers short of full-staffing earlier this year.
The numbers are also preliminary. In 2024, homicides in Nashville were down nearly 20 percent at the halfway point of the year before a deadly summer, when violence is typically more prevalent. By the end of the year, the city had seen 104 homicides, one more than the year before…