Governor Moore is running for reelection on a “44% homicide drop.” Outside Baltimore City, homicides barely moved for three straight years — and the rest of Maryland has barely been mentioned.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
On Saturday, Governor Wes Moore formally launched his 2026 reelection campaign at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, calling the city’s crime turnaround “the greatest public safety story in the country” and his own record “historic.” His campaign website declares that “homicides in Maryland have dropped 44% since Gov. Moore took office.” That same day, Moore posted on X touting Baltimore City’s year-to-date homicide comparisons against 2023, crediting his administration’s “record funding support for local law enforcement.”
The homicide decline is real, and Baltimore’s numbers are genuinely historic. But the “44% since Moore took office” figure requires a closer look at when Moore took office, what baseline he chose, and what the rest of Maryland’s crime record looks like — the part he isn’t mentioning on the campaign trail.
A review of state and federal crime data from 2020 through the most recent available figures reveals that Maryland’s total crime count has risen under Moore, property crime is higher than when he took office, the state ranks among the worst in the nation for auto theft, Maryland’s violent crime rate remains above the national average, and the homicide improvement — real as it is — tracks a national trend that predates Moore and is driven disproportionately by Baltimore City, where a separate local strategy deserves substantial credit.
The Baseline Problem
Moore’s “44% since I took office” compares current figures to January 2023 — the peak of a multi-year post-pandemic crime surge. Measuring improvement from a historical high is the oldest trick in political statistics. The more honest question: is Maryland safer than it was before the spike? On total crime and property crime, the answer is no.
The Baseline: What Maryland Looked Like Before Moore
Moore took office in January 2023, having won the November 2022 election. His relevant baseline, therefore, is what he inherited from Governor Larry Hogan — a state that had already seen pandemic-era disruptions to crime patterns.
In 2020, Maryland recorded 123,439 total crime incidents, a sharp drop from 145,815 in 2019 — a pandemic-induced anomaly, not a policy achievement. Statewide homicides spiked to a ten-year high that year, reaching 573. Property crime was artificially suppressed because people weren’t leaving home.
As the state reopened, crime rebounded. By 2022 — the year Moore was elected — Maryland had 127,557 reported crimes. By 2023, his first year in office, that figure climbed to 150,766. By 2024, it rose again to 154,699. That is the trajectory Moore owns, and it runs in the wrong direction.
Let that context settle: Maryland recorded more total crimes in both of Moore’s first two full years in office than in any year for which comparable data exists in this period. The 2023 jump of 18% from 2022 to 2023 is particularly striking — and it happened on Moore’s watch.
Homicides: The Claim, and the Context
Moore’s campaign website states he has cut homicides by “44% statewide” since taking office, “58% in Baltimore City” and “39% in Prince George’s County.” His reelection launch speech called it “the greatest public safety turnaround story” in the nation. His official governor’s press release in January 2026 added that non-fatal shootings are down 40% statewide.
These figures are real — and require two important qualifications.
First, the baseline. Moore took office in January 2023, during the tail end of a post-pandemic violent crime surge. The actual statewide homicide peak was 2021 at 649 — not 2020 as commonly cited — and it remained elevated at 601 in 2022 before dropping to 525 in Moore’s first year. Measuring a percentage drop from Moore’s January 2023 start date is the most favorable comparison available. A fairer baseline would be pre-surge 2019, when Maryland recorded 543 homicides statewide. Maryland recorded 463 homicides in 2024 — down significantly, but from a post-pandemic high, not a stable baseline.
The real statewide arc makes Moore’s claim more defensible in one way and less so in another. Starting from 649 in 2021 and landing near 350 in 2025 is roughly a 46% drop from the actual peak — meaning the 44% Moore cites is approximately accurate if you use his chosen baseline. But it also means the improvement began in 2022, under Hogan, before Moore took a single official action.
Second, the driving force behind the Baltimore numbers. Baltimore’s homicide peak was 2021 — before Moore took office. The city’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS), credited by Mayor Brandon Scott, was the primary local intervention already underway when Moore arrived. At his own reelection launch, Scott said the governor’s support was meaningful — but Scott also spoke first, and the GVRS is his program. Baltimore ended 2025 at 133 homicides, its lowest in nearly 50 years. That is a genuine milestone. It is also substantially a city-level policy achievement.
The statewide homicide decline, by Moore’s own figures, is 44% since January 2023. Since 2021 — the actual peak — it is approximately 32% statewide versus 41% in Baltimore City. That gap is the accountability story: Baltimore is outperforming the rest of Maryland, not reflecting it.
Outside Baltimore City, homicides held at 262–267 for three consecutive years while Moore’s campaign declared a statewide public safety revolution.
The Rest of Maryland Was Left Behind
The data exposes a geographic divide that Moore’s campaign narrative has entirely obscured. Strip Baltimore City out of the homicide numbers, and what remains is not a public safety turnaround — it is three years of stagnation followed by a single year of improvement that tracks the national trend.
Outside Baltimore City, Maryland recorded 268 homicides in 2022. Then 263 in 2023 — Moore’s first year. Then 262 in 2024 — Moore’s second year. For 24 straight months of the Moore administration, homicides outside Baltimore City were essentially unchanged. Prince George’s County, Baltimore County, and the rest of suburban and rural Maryland were not experiencing “the greatest public safety turnaround in the country.” They were treading water.
This matters because the governor’s public safety narrative is being built almost entirely on Baltimore City’s story — a story driven by a city-level strategy Moore did not create, a mayor who took office before Moore did, and a national trend that was already running in the right direction. Meanwhile, the 23 counties and jurisdictions outside Baltimore City, which account for roughly 60% of the state’s population, received the campaign rhetoric without the results.
The Two Marylands
Baltimore City homicides fell 24% from 2022 to 2024 under Moore’s first two years. Homicides everywhere else in Maryland fell less than 3% over the same period — from 268 to 262. The “statewide” achievement is almost entirely one city’s achievement.
The 2025 improvement outside Baltimore — dropping to an estimated 207–217 — is the first real signal of progress in the rest of the state. But that single-year decline tracks a national pattern: 2025 was a broadly good year for violent crime nationally — Donald Trump’s first year back in the White House. Moore cannot claim credit for a national trend any more than he can claim credit for Baltimore’s city-specific strategy.
What has Moore done for Prince George’s County, where homicides ran near 90 per year through 2023 and 2024? What has he done for Baltimore County, where car thefts jumped 184% in his first year? What investments has his administration made in the Eastern Shore, Western Maryland, or the suburban jurisdictions where the outside-Baltimore homicide numbers sat flat for two years? Those questions are not being asked at the B&O Railroad Museum reelection rallies.
Property Crime: A Record Moore Doesn’t Mention
If homicides are where Moore sounds best, property crime is where the record looks worst — and where the statewide quality-of-life impact is felt most broadly.
In 2020, Maryland reported 97,487 property crimes at a rate of 1,609 per 100,000 residents. By 2024, the state reported 128,369 property crimes at a rate of approximately 2,050 per 100,000 — a 32% increase in the property crime rate under Moore’s watch. Maryland ranked 8th in the nation for high property crime rates in 2024, above the national average of 1,760 per 100,000.
Auto Theft: A National Embarrassment
The property crime story has one particularly ugly chapter: motor vehicle theft. In 2023, Maryland recorded the largest percentage increase in vehicle theft of any state in the nation — up 63% from 2022 — and tied with the District of Columbia for the worst performance in the country. The spike was driven in part by the nationally publicized vulnerability of certain Kia and Hyundai models, but Maryland’s numbers were among the worst anywhere.
At the peak, a vehicle was stolen in Maryland every 47 minutes. In Baltimore County alone, car thefts in 2023 rose 184% from the prior year. Anne Arundel County reported a 111% increase. A subsequent study rated Maryland second in the nation for auto theft risk.
By The Numbers
Maryland ranked tied for the nation’s worst increase in vehicle thefts in 2023: +63% in a single year. Baltimore County alone: +184%. Anne Arundel County: +111%. Vehicle thefts fell 22.7% in 2024 — but from a catastrophic baseline.
The 2024 improvement — a 22.7% drop in auto thefts statewide — is genuine, but it came after a man-made crisis that occurred entirely during Moore’s first year in office, and from a baseline that the administration helped create by failing to move fast enough on the Kia/Hyundai vulnerability response. The national average decrease in auto thefts in 2024 was 18.6%. Maryland beat that mark, but only after falling further than almost any other state.
Violent Crime: Real Improvement, Wrong Attribution
Statewide violent crime in Maryland has improved. In 2024, the state reported 26,345 violent crimes — down from roughly 27,100 in 2023. Nationally, 2024 produced the lowest violent crime rates since at least 1969, with murders down 14.9%, rapes down 5.2%, and robberies down 8.9%. Maryland’s decline tracks that national trajectory.
The problem for Moore’s credit-claiming is that the trend is national, not Maryland-specific. Every governor in America is presiding over declining violent crime right now. Maryland’s violent crime rate of 420.4 per 100,000 residents in 2024 was still 17.1% above the national average — not a distinction a governor running for reelection should want to highlight.
The Legislature Had to Pass a Law to Get the Data
There is a structural footnote to this entire debate that has received almost no attention: the Moore administration has had a documented pattern of slow-walking the official crime data. Maryland law requires the Department of State Police to publish an annual Uniform Crime Report — the official, comprehensive dataset underlying any honest statewide crime accounting.
According to the Department of Legislative Services, DSP’s law enforcement funding was formally withheld pending submission of the UCR, with DLS processing a release letter only after the reports were submitted — months late. The 2023 UCR wasn’t released until December 23, 2024. The 2025 UCR has not yet been published as of this writing.
Separately, HB1304 — passed in the 2025 General Assembly session — now legally requires DSP to submit UCR data to DLS by November 30 each year and create a formal work plan. The fact that the legislature had to mandate this by statute suggests the prior submission record was sufficiently unreliable that lawmakers felt compelled to act. SB282 — the 2026 budget bill — includes a provision conditioning DSP funds on submission of the 2025 UCR.
The practical effect: Moore’s administration is claiming historic public safety achievements based on preliminary, administration-curated figures — while the independent official data that would allow full verification has been chronically delayed or is simply not yet available. His campaign is running on numbers that the state’s own UCR process hasn’t fully certified.
What Moore Can Legitimately Claim
This is not a story of zero progress. Statewide homicides are down roughly 32% since 2021, and the administration has invested in community violence intervention infrastructure. The U.S. Attorney for Maryland credited Project Safe Neighborhoods collaboration across federal, state, and local agencies. Moore reinstated state law enforcement resources to support Baltimore City operations that the prior administration had cut. The $124.1 million FY2027 law enforcement funding proposal is real money.
Moore can fairly say he continued and did not reverse a declining violence trend, and that his administration’s partnership with Baltimore City contributed to an accelerated improvement. He cannot fairly claim that the trend began with him, that it reflects statewide performance rather than Baltimore City’s concentrated improvement, or that Maryland is broadly safer when total crime is higher, property crime is up sharply, and the state ranked 15th in the nation for violent crime rates and 8th for property crime in 2024.
Maryland’s violent crime rate in 2024 remained 17.1% above the national average. Its property crime rate was 16.4% above the national average. By neither measure is Maryland a public safety success story.
The governor’s reelection campaign launched Saturday with the crime record front and center. He called it “the greatest public safety turnaround story in the country.” Measured by the one metric his campaign has chosen — Baltimore City homicides, from a pandemic-era peak — it is a compelling story. Measured by what happened in the other 23 jurisdictions, total crime, property crime, auto theft, or Maryland’s standing relative to the national average, it is not.
There are two Marylands in this data. One is Baltimore City, which has achieved something genuinely historic with a city-led strategy. The other is everywhere else — where the numbers barely moved for two years, where property crime surged, where auto theft spiked to national-worst levels, and where the governor’s campaign hasn’t been spending much time explaining what he did for them.
Accountability journalism requires showing all of the numbers. Maryland voters — all of them, not just the ones in Baltimore City — deserve to see them before November.
Sources: Maryland State Police UCR 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 · FBI UCR / Crime Data Explorer 2024 · USAFacts Maryland Crime Dashboard · Patch Maryland (FBI UCR 2024 state release, Aug. 2025) · Wikipedia: Crime in Maryland; Crime in Baltimore · Baltimore Mayor’s Office press releases (2025) · CBS Baltimore: 2024 violent crime reduction · WTOP News: vehicle theft statistics · Council on Criminal Justice: Crime in Baltimore (Jan. 2026) · 5 Star Car Title Loans / Nottingham MD study on auto theft rankings · National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) 2023 · Maryland Vehicle Theft Prevention Council annual reports · wesmoore.com campaign pages (Jan.–May 2026) · governor.maryland.gov press releases · Yahoo News / Baltimore Sun: Moore reelection launch (May 2, 2026) · Maryland DLS budget testimony FY2026 (W00A.pdf) · Maryland SB282 (2026, chaptered); HB1304 (2025 session) · Maryland GOCPP Reports and Publications portal · Statewide homicide data outside Baltimore City cross-referenced via Maryland State Police UCR series
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