This map, built by Gothamist with police data and reporting by our journalists, shows how shootings over the last four years have been heavily focused on a small number of New York City blocks.
It combines two publicly available NYPD datasets and 2024 fatal shooting data compiled by Gothamist from NYPD information. 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 and 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 shooting incidents 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 showshow 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 hand-coded 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 this map is relevant 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.
