The number of people shot and lethality of shootings fell in 2025, which officials credited to better data tracking, street teams, and more. (Photo by Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)
Shootings in New Jersey hit a record low last year, for the third year in a row, state officials announced Tuesday.
They said 559 people were shot in 487 incidents last year, down from 778 in 2024 and 924 in 2023.
Before 2023, the number of shooting victims had topped 1,000 every year, annually averaging about 1,300, since officials began tracking gun violence statewide in 2009, Attorney General Matt Platkin said. Atlantic City, Camden, Newark, Paterson, and Trenton all saw their shooting numbers drop, officials said.
The lethality of gun violence also fell, with 107 fatalities reported last year. That’s down 31% from 2024 and more than 60% from 2016, when 273 people were shot to death in the deadliest year for gun violence since 2009, officials said.
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“Just a few years ago, many experts — and by the way, yours truly — said getting below 1,000 shootings in a year was impossible. But we did it, and then we went further, nearly cutting that number in half,” Gov. Phil Murphy said during the announcement in East Rutherford.
Murphy and other state officials credited the drop to the state’s famously tough gun laws, street teams that work to de-escalate community tensions and reduce violence, interventions like Arrive Together that pair police with mental health professionals to respond to calls, and better data tracking that ensures “an intelligence-led strategy” to cutting gun crime.
“We are not just reacting to crime. We are identifying it, targeting it, and preventing it,” acting Superintendent Lt. Col. David Sierotowicz said. “Our real-time crime centers and gunfire detection technology and other surveillance techniques allow us to identify shootings as they occur in real time, rapidly deploy resources, and provide investigators with critical information to identify both suspects and victims.”
New Jersey also has seen “a meaningful drop in auto thefts, a crime that too often escalates into other forms of violence,” Murphy noted. The number of vehicles stolen statewide fell 9% from 15,041 in 2024 to 13,693 last year, according to the New Jersey State Police.
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