Jersey city leaders are taking a victory lap today, touting new crime statistics that show homicide rates have dropped to a historic low in the city, reaching a single digit level.

The mayor credits the achievement through collaboration between police and the community.

But if you dig deeper, according to some of his opponents, the stats show other smaller crimes like car break ins and package thefts aren't slowing at the same pace.

Ted Goldberg reports.

This will be the first year that we actually achieve single digits of homicides, which we are very proud of.

Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop says his city has made major strides in bringing down homicides.

About a decade ago, Jersey city averaged 20 or 25 homicides a year, and in 2024, that number is six, including one homicide from a few years ago that was reclassified as a homicide this year for the first time this year.

We have a lower homicide rate than New York City.

We have a significantly lower homicide rate than the national average.

Fulop who's running for governor next year, said there were several factors, including work from community groups, more security cameras citywide, and better cooperation between police and the courts.

We were finding a lot of times how to who did it, but we weren't being able to successfully prosecute them.

So we have invested all our efforts over the last ten years into technology, into, getting a better picture of who's committing crimes into intelligence.

Whatever's causing the drop in homicides, it's happened with fewer police officers working citywide.

Fulop's presentation of numbers today included another decline in the number of cops, which has dropped for three years in a row.

Despite the shrinking staff, city leaders say police have maintained a fairly consistent number of illegal guns confiscated.

The guns are still there.

Just law enforcement and the prosecution prosecutor's office and the community activists are doing a better job in keeping our streets safe.

Who would have thought we were even able to say there was no homicides this summer?

Pamela Johnson leads the Anti-Violence Coalition of Hudson County, and she's quick to spread around the credit.

Our officers, you know, being out trying to prevent or, intervene or the escalate in any type of violence.

But the fact that we have a plethora of community organizations who have been producing miraculous, you know, magic, for families and youth across Hudson County.

But the numbers weren't all rosy.

Stolen vehicles, a regular theft, package theft, that kind of thing.

We're still struggling with public safety, Director James Shea says you can't compare numbers for these kind of crimes because they're calculated differently.

Now, using a national model, the numbers system is much more granular, much more involved, captures a lot more detail about the crimes that are occurring and is now the required reporting throughout the country.

Shea blames bail reform for the increase in crimes like car theft.

When I asked how bail reform could lead to more thefts but fewer homicides, he said it's because those crimes are treated differently by the criminal justice system.

Homicide perpetrators, if they obviously if they are prosecuted successfully, they're removed from the streets for a long time and they're not able to continue doing it.

I believe in bail reform.

I think we have to fix this without touching the bail reform thing.

But that person is now out.

And unfortunately, those lower level criminals commit multiple crimes, some of them 20 to 30 a day.

If you are doing 20 to 25 crimes a day, you should probably be moving through the judicial process quicker.

So that way you don't get released so quickly.

Johnson hopes to see these numbers improve next year, which is also when New Jerseyans will elect a new governor.

She hopes the next leader of the state will continue funding community groups like hers.

Without that, funding began beginning from the state in 2021.

And the, Governor Murphy, who took who did something that no other governors were doing right.

He put violence prevention intervention in the budget and then stood ten toes down and then created funding to support those organizations, which is just one of several issues in next year's governor's race, something Fulop and other candidates will be sure to chime in on.

In Jersey City, I'm Ted Goldberg, NJ Spotlight News.