US crime dropped widely in 2024, FBI says — with some notable caveats
The numbers were part of the FBI's annual Unified Crime Report, a report released by the bureau each year. And despite the overwhelmingly positive findings, the report did underscore a sobering uptick in attacks on law enforcement officers in the line of duty over the last four years.
This year's report used data shared by roughly 16,675 law enforcement agencies across the U.S., accounting for nearly 96% of U.S. residents, the FBI said.
The majority of the trends from the new report were positive. Violent crime decreased by 4.5% in 2024 compared to the previous 12-month period, the report found — the second consecutive annual decline measured in the bureau's annual report.
In 2024, the U.S. saw a nearly 15% decline in murder and manslaughter rates compared to 2023, the FBI said, down to the lowest amount in roughly nine years.
Meanwhile, the U.S. also saw a 5.2% decrease in rapes and a 3% drop in aggravated assaults in 2024.
Property crime also dropped by roughly 8% during the same 12-month period — a big decline compared to 2023, which saw a much smaller 2.4% decrease compared to the previous year.
Burglaries were down 8.6%, and motor vehicle theft dropped by a whopping 18% in 2024.
Hate crimes also saw a small decline in 2024, the report found.
Still, the report included some sobering statistics, including an uptick in the number of law enforcement officers killed and the number of hate crimes against Jewish individuals.
The FBI report found that during the four-year period from 2021 to 2024, 258 law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty — the highest four-year trend in some 20 years.
Of the 258 law enforcement officers killed, 64 were killed in 2024, the FBI report found.
Reported attacks and assaults, including aggravated and simple assault offenses, also saw a 10-year high with 85,730 officers assaulted in the line of duty.
The FBI report also revealed an uptick in reported hate crimes against Jewish individuals, with 1,938 such crimes reported in the 12-month period — a 5.8% increase from 2023. That's the highest number recorded by the FBI since its annual data collection began in 1991, according to the ADL.
Roughly 1,221,345 violent crime offenses were committed in 2024, the FBI report said, while an estimated 419,423 arrests for violent crime offenses were made during the same 12-month period.
Still, much work remains for the bureau: According to its estimates, violent crime in the U.S. occurred on average every 25.9 seconds in 2024, with a murder occurring roughly every 31 minutes.
The FBI's data, while imperfect, accounts for more than 95% of U.S. residents, according to the 2024 report.
It comes after the bureau struggled in recent years — including in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic — to accurately compile the aggregate annual crime data.
This was in large part due to the bureau's transition to the newer, National Incident-Based Reporting System it adopted in 2022. Many local police agencies had failed to transition to the new incident reporting in time, prompting the FBI's 2021-2022 report to reflect an incomplete data set, which was later adjusted by the bureau.
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