San Diego reports overall crime fell 6% in 2025, with declines across major categories

San Diego’s 2025 crime totals show broad declines, while some measures remain contested

Citywide crime in San Diego fell 6% in 2025 compared with 2024, extending a multi-year downward trend recorded in the city’s annual public-safety reporting. The decline was accompanied by reductions in several major crime types, including homicide and motor vehicle theft, based on year-end counts compiled in the city’s crime-statistics and public-safety summaries.

Publicly released year-end figures for 2025 include decreases of 22% in motor vehicle theft and 22% in murders, alongside a 7% decline in sexual assaults. City reporting also cited a 96% homicide clearance rate, with police indicating 27 of 28 homicides were solved during the year.

The 2025 results were also reflected in the San Diego Police Department’s annual surveillance reporting, which summarized citywide trends and noted that “overall, crime fell 6 percent across San Diego in 2025,” with decreases in nearly all major crime types. The same reporting highlighted substantial drops in theft-related categories that agencies often track closely due to their volume and day-to-day impact on residents.

Technology, enforcement and measurement limits

San Diego’s surveillance reporting discussed automated license plate reader (ALPR) use as one tool used in investigations and property-crime enforcement. It reported that motor vehicle thefts fell by more than 21% in the first year of deployment and then decreased another 22% in 2025, while thefts from motor vehicles fell 25% in 2025. The report also emphasized that directly attributing changes in crime trends to a single factor is difficult and that establishing baselines for some performance measures remains challenging.

• Overall crime: down 6% in 2025 compared with 2024
• Motor vehicle theft: down 22% in 2025 (year over year)
• Thefts from motor vehicles: down 25% in 2025
• Murders: down 22% in 2025 (year over year), with a reported 96% clearance rate

Neighborhood-level data provides detail, not a single “city total” narrative

San Diego’s incident-based reporting system publishes neighborhood-by-neighborhood counts for crimes against persons, property and society, allowing residents to see how totals vary by area. Those tables show substantial differences in the volume and mix of reported incidents across neighborhoods, reflecting variations in population, land use, visitor activity, and enforcement patterns. The city notes that incident-based reporting captures details for each event and can record multiple offenses within the same incident, which can affect how totals are interpreted.

Year-end reporting emphasizes that incident-based statistics provide more detail than older summary formats and can change how categories are counted and compared across years.

While the city’s top-line figures point to a broad decline in 2025, public discussions of “violent crime” trends can differ depending on which definitions and datasets are used. Some city reporting groups sexual assault within a broader public-safety summary, while other tallies track rape as a separate category, which can lead to different conclusions about whether every violent-crime category declined. Readers comparing sources are advised to confirm definitions, time periods and whether figures are preliminary or finalized.