California homicide rate falls to historic low as police make more arrests in killings

California’s homicide rate reached a new record low last year, part of an ongoing national decline in homicides that set historic lows in major cities and reverses three years of a pandemic-related spike in the homicide rate. 

The attorney general’s office released 2025’s crime statistics on Wednesday morning and said  California’s homicide rate of 3.5 per 100,000 people is the lowest on record since 1966, the year the national homicide rate started climbing past 5.1 per 100,000 people and the earliest homicide rate records kept by the state.

Crime data analysts say there are several contributing factors to the decline, but no clear reason why the numbers are dropping as significantly as they are. 

“At this point, as the number of homicides is about 18% below the pre-pandemic number, and the lowest reported in at least 40 years, additional contributing factors, beyond a return to normalcy, are likely to play a role,” said Magnus Lofstrom, policy director of criminal justice at nonpartisan think tank the Public Policy Institute of California.

“It is unclear what they are, but law enforcement’s ability to solve homicides may well be one.”

In Los Angeles, which had a significant federal law enforcement presence for at least one month last year, homicides were down in three of the Los Angeles Police Department’s four bureaus. The city’s homicide rate dropped to 5.9 per 100,000 people, the lowest rate in the city since 1959, according to the police department’s annual crime report. 

The falling homicide rate in the state’s largest city was reflective of a broader national trend that continued into this year, what crime data analyst Jeff Asher said was the lowest rate of killings reported by the FBI in recent U.S. history. 

After years of decline, the homicide rate in California surged by 31% in 2020 to 5.5 homicides per 100,000 people. In 2021, it rose again, to about 6 per 100,000 people. 

But that trend began to turn in 2022. By the end of 2024, the homicide rate in California was down to 4.3 per 100,000 people. 

California Democratic leaders said the statistics showed their policies were succeeding, although the declining homicide rate is in line with the national trend. 

“These numbers prove that the investments in community violence intervention over recent years and the commitment to effective partnerships and collaboration between federal, state, and local governments, law enforcement agencies, and community partners are working,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta in a press release. 

At the same time the homicide numbers were climbing, the percentage of cases cleared by police was falling. A police department’s “clearance rate” compares the number of crimes reported to the number of arrests made, though the rates can vary dramatically among police departments.  

Those numbers started to recover as the homicide rate dropped. From 55% in 2021, the homicide clearance rate rose to 64% in 2024. Last year, the homicide clearance rate was 79%. 

“The most surprising part of the 2025 crime data to me was the 15% increase in the homicide clearance rate,” Lofstrom said. “This is very encouraging, but it will be important to unpack the notable jump to determine what efforts led to the striking improvement.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom touted the results Wednesday morning along with double-digit declines in the rates of robbery, car theft, property crime and violent crime overall. 

“These results show that when we invest in our communities, support law enforcement, crack down on organized crime, and expand prevention and intervention efforts, we can save lives and improve public safety,” Newsom said.