Map: Where New York City’s gun violence is concentrated

This map, which Gothamist built with police data and reporting by our journalists, shows how shootings over the last four years have been heavily concentrated on just a few blocks.

It combines two publicly available NYPD datasets to show all shootings citywide at the block level over the last four years. It also incorporates Gothamist’s own data on fatal shootings in 2024, which is compiled and continuously updated with information from the NYPD. It was analyzed with help from Christopher Herrmann, a crime mapping expert and associate professor at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and his colleague Fritz Umbach, a historical criminologist who is also an associate professor at John Jay.

To start exploring the map, click on a census block — the smallest unit captured by NYPD data. A pop-up will appear, showing the number of shootings that occurred in that census block from January 2020 to June 2024.

All 2024 shootings are represented by a white dot. Click on it to see Gothamist’s reporting, including information on exactly when the shooting happened and links to articles about the incident.

This map shows how concentrated shootings have been over time and provides context as to how gun violence plays out in all five boroughs.

Methodology

To create the color-coded blocks, we used geospatial analysis software to layer the two shooting incident datasets with a map of NYC census blocks. Then we counted the number of shooting incidents in each census block.

Each shooting is geolocated to the middle of the street closest to where it happened, and each census block touches at least four different streets, so block-level counts are approximate and exact locations may not be depicted. The block-level counts reflect individual shooting incidents, rather than shooting victims. This part of the map will be updated quarterly when new data is published on NYC Open Data.

The 2024 fatal shootings dataset is coded by hand and will be updated weekly. Each incident is paired with a Google Street View image of its reported location. The images are auto-generated and may only show the immediate surroundings, rather than the precise spot where a fatal shooting took place.

We want to hear from you

The more relevant this map is to you, the better it is for everyone. Please reply in the comments with ideas of other things you’d like to see on this map.