Shooting Deaths Halved Across Upstate New York, and Seventeen Departments Recorded None

Twenty-six people were killed by gunfire in the first six months of 2026 across the 28 police departments in New York's Gun Involved Violence Elimination initiative. In the same six months of 2025, the figure was 50 [1]. That is 24 fewer deaths, a decline of 48 percent, and it is the largest of the drops the state announced on July 27.

The rest of the shooting numbers move the same direction at a gentler slope. Shooting incidents involving injury fell from 244 to 197, down 47 incidents or 19 percent. Shooting victims fell from 279 to 223, down 56 or 20 percent [1]. Seventeen of the 28 departments reported no firearm-related murders at all during the first six months of 2026 [1].

The seventeen are Amherst, Auburn, Binghamton, Hempstead, Ithaca, Jamestown, Kingston, Lackawanna, Middletown, Mount Vernon, Newburgh, Rochester, Schenectady, Spring Valley, Utica, Watertown and Yonkers [1]. Rochester is on that list. Yonkers, Schenectady, Utica and Lackawanna are on it too. Six months is not a year and a zero is not a trend, but a half-year with no firearm murder in Rochester is a thing that has to be recorded when it happens.

The GIVE departments are not a random sample. The state says they account for about 90 percent of violent crimes involving firearms and 85 percent of all violent crime reported outside New York City, and that they serve the most populated communities in the state outside the city [1]. Whatever is happening here is happening to most of upstate and suburban New York's gun violence at once.

Governor Kathy Hochul put the deaths first. "These statistics are more than just numbers. They are the lives that weren't cut short, a loved one who didn't receive a devastating phone call, and a community that was spared another act of violence," she said [1]. Rossana Rosado, commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services, said the same thing from the agency side: "Throughout New York, our dedicated GIVE partners continue to make a real difference in their communities. These positive trends in gun violence and crime represent fewer tragedies, more families kept whole, and more young people who are alive and able to thrive" [1].

There is a wrinkle in the release that anyone reading quickly will get wrong, and it is worth getting right. The shooting figures cover the first six months of 2026. The broader crime figures in the same announcement do not. Those cover January through March only. The release states that "the 17,105 index crimes reported by GIVE agencies from January through March were the fewest during the first quarter of any year from 2017 through 2026," and that the same agencies reported "the fewest violent crimes (2,473 v. 3,288, a 25 percent decline), including murders (16), and property crimes (14,632 v. 17,608, a 17 percent drop) during the first three months of that same timeframe" [1].

Those numbers hold. Violent crime fell 815 offenses, which is 24.8 percent. Property crime fell 2,976, which is 16.9 percent. The two categories add to 17,105 exactly, matching the stated index-crime total. The comparison year adds to 20,896, so first-quarter index crime is down about 18 percent year over year. What none of that supports is a sentence saying 17,105 index crimes were recorded in the first half of 2026. The state did not say that, and a first-half index figure has not been published.

The "fewest" claim is also narrower than it sounds. The release compares the first quarter of every year from 2017 through 2026 [1]. That is a ten-year window, not a record going back indefinitely. Ten years is a real benchmark. It is not the same as an all-time low, and the state did not claim it was.

One further caution on the shooting data. Deaths fell 48 percent while injury-shooting incidents fell 19 percent, so the fatal end of the curve dropped more than twice as fast as the non-fatal end. That is the most interesting pattern in the release and also the one we cannot yet explain, because the state's public figures do not define whether the 223 shooting victims include the 26 people who died or count only the wounded. Without that definition, a fatality rate cannot be calculated from these two numbers, and we are not going to invent one.

What survives all of the caveats is the count itself. In the first half of 2025, 50 people in these 28 jurisdictions were killed by gunfire. In the first half of 2026, 26 were. Twenty-six families still got the phone call Hochul described. Twenty-four fewer families than last year did.