Well well well would you look at that:

“The low point in violent crime has arrived even though large police departments employed 6 percent fewer officers going into 2025 than they did at the beginning of 2020, according to a survey by the Police Executive Research Forum. Though they were mostly not in fact defunded, police forces were rocked by retirements and departures. New Orleans lost nearly a quarter of its officers in the years after the pandemic—and then recorded its lowest homicide rate since the 1970s in 2025. Philadelphia had its lowest per-capita police staffing since 1985—and just clocked its lowest murder rate since 1966.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/great-crime-decline/685695/?gift=1SbYZC9ibNUWbkW55Dp60vEhEml04LWtQPZJDK2f5XQ&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share