Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox reported homicides are up nearly 30% this year, as Mayor Michelle Wu continued to tout Boston as the safest major city in the country at a year-end public safety briefing.

Cox said there have been 31 homicides in the city thus far this year, compared to 24 for all of last year, but said that number still reflects a near record-low for the city — and represents a 16% decrease from the city’s five-year average.

“In comparison to last year’s 67-year low in homicide rates in the city’s history, we have had an increase, although we don’t know what the final number will be,” Cox said Monday at the Boston EMS Training Center in West Roxbury. “This year still represents a 16% decrease from our five-year average, and the lowest number in the last 20 years, but for the 67-year low I made mention to.”

The 29.1% uptick in homicides was reported by the police commissioner at an end-of-year public safety briefing that was a more tempered affair than how 2024 police statistics were reported last December.

At last year’s press conference, Cox boasted that the “city has never been safer,” when joining the mayor in rolling out end-of-year crime statistics that featured a record-low number of homicides and shootings.

The number of murders in 2024 “appears to be the lowest since 1957,” and is “by far” the lowest amount since the Boston Police Department began tracking such data in 2007, when there were 68 homicides, Cox said at the time.

Wu, who was gearing up for a reelection campaign at the time, pointed to the data as evidence that Boston is the “safest major city in the country.” She stuck to that same refrain on Monday, despite the uptick in homicides, and a significant spike in shoplifting that was also highlighted by the police commissioner.

“Being a home for everyone means being there, not just during the good times, but all the time,” Wu said. “It means showing up for families, even when they feel the ground beneath them is falling through and when they’re having the worst days and the worst moments of their lives.”

Referring to the city’s public safety teams, including police, firefighters and EMS personnel, Wu said, “It’s because of the care, the hard work, and the empathy of these teams that Boston is the safest major city in the country.”

Isaac Yablo, Wu’s senior adviser for community safety and director of the Office of Violence Prevention for the Boston Public Health Commission, said the city’s approach to tackling gun violence has shifted from focusing solely on five hot-spot neighborhoods to “a city-wide focus, so that more residents are being met where they’re at and we’re addressing needs more holistically.”

“As we look into the new year, we will continue focusing on secondary and tertiary prevention, but the main goal will be primary prevention — preventing the violence from happening in the first place,” Yablo said.

Cox said the Police Department has “doubled our efforts in community policing,” following last year’s record-low gun violence, which he said has led to “historic lows” for this year’s number of shooting victims and gunfire incidents. Both are down more than 30% compared to the department’s five-year averages, he said.

Shoplifting, however, remains “an issue in our city,” Cox said, which has led to the police department making retail theft an increased priority alongside its efforts to “sustain lower levels of violence” — with the two sometimes overlapping.

He attributed that increased focus, by way of a Safe Shopping Initiative the department has partnered on with the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office, to a 113% increase in arrests for shoplifting this year — driven in part by a “substantial increase in timely, more detailed reporting from the retailers.”

“This increased reporting supports Boston Police Department’s ability to address repeat violent and high-volume offenders with the ultimate goal of keeping shoppers and retailers safe,” Cox said.

The police commissioner also shared statistics that suggest crime is down at the troubled intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, an area commonly referred to as Mass and Cass and known for being home to the city’s open-air drug market, as well as the downtown.

Police have targeted Mass and Cass and the downtown in recent years, following reports of increased violence and drug activity, Cox said.

Around downtown, violent crime has declined by 24% this year and police have increased patrols there by 31%, compared to last year. Officers have made 48% more arrests in the downtown, including 30% more drug arrests, he said.

The police commissioner said violent crime is down 8% and property crime has decreased by 10% this year in the Mass and Cass area. Arrests at Methadone Mile have increased by 54%, Cox said.

Cox did not elaborate on whether those statistics for Mass and Cass extend to hot-spot areas like the South End, where residents have complained of open-air drug use, dealing and violence that has spilled over into their neighborhoods.

He also highlighted the department’s focus on reckless motorized scooter operations, which have become a nuisance for residents. To date this year police have seized more than 840 electric scooters, including 160 from the downtown area, representing a 22% increase in seizures since last year, Cox said.

The police commissioner said seizures are made for illegal, unregistered scooter operations.

_____

©2025 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.