MB crime fell 6% in 2025 — the numbers and the honest open questions

June 2026 · Published: June 12, 2026

Manhattan Beach logged 1,339 serious crime reports in 2025, down from 1,425 in 2024 — a 6.0% drop, or 86 fewer reports — according to the MBPD year-end breakdown posted on the city's crime statistics page. The table uses the FBI's NIBRS "Group A" standard: the full list of serious offenses, from homicide to shoplifting, that police departments report nationally. Here's what actually moved, and what the table can and can't tell you.

What fell

Property crime did the heavy lifting: down 7.0% overall (1,075 reports vs. 1,156), per the MBPD table. The standouts:

  • Burglary: down 28.9% — 96 reports vs. 135 in 2024, or 39 fewer break-ins reported.
  • Motor vehicle theft: down 19.7% — 61 vs. 76.
  • Robbery: down 18.8% — 13 vs. 16.
  • Larceny: down 8.9% — 575 vs. 631. Still the most common crime in town by far; thefts make up roughly four of every ten reports.

Zoom out and the slide is two years long: total reports were 1,648 in 2023, so 2025 came in about 9% below the three-year average.

What rose

Honesty requires the other column. Reported violent crime rose 7.2% — but the raw number is 134 reports vs. 125, nine more incidents in a year. And the composition matters: aggravated assault, the most serious assault category, fell 25.9% (20 vs. 27). The increase came from simple assault (65 vs. 59), intimidation (31 vs. 23), and rape (7 vs. 5). There was one murder in each year.

Two quieter categories also moved against the trend: vandalism rose 37.7% (106 vs. 77), and counterfeiting/forgery more than doubled (51 vs. 24).

Why raw numbers matter as much as percentages

In a city this size, small bases make wild percentages. Kidnapping "fell 75%" — that's four reports becoming one. Treat any double-digit swing on a category with under ~30 incidents as weather, not climate.

One more caveat: these are reports, not crimes. NIBRS counts what reaches MBPD. Crime analysts told NPR that community trust affects whether people call the police at all — so reported totals and reality can drift apart in either direction.

The context: 2025 was a down year almost everywhere

Manhattan Beach's drop landed in the middle of a national one. The Council on Criminal Justice's year-end 2025 analysis found homicide down 21% across its city sample, residential burglary down 17%, larceny down 11%, and motor vehicle theft down 27%. Against those benchmarks, MB's burglary decline (-28.9%) was steeper than the big-city average, while its larceny decline (-8.9%) was a bit shallower. The shape of MB's year, in other words, looks a lot like the country's.

Three candidate explanations — none of which we can prove

1. The national tide. Analysts interviewed by NPR broadly attribute the 2025 decline to the pandemic-era crime surge unwinding; Adam Gelb of the Council on Criminal Justice points to the easing of the economic and social stresses that drove crime up in 2020-21. If crime fell nearly everywhere, the open question for MB is whether anything local mattered at all — or whether our curve simply tracks the country's.

2. Cameras, doorbells, and plate readers? Police leaders nationally often credit surveillance technology for property-crime declines. We have not seen MBPD attribute its 2025 numbers to cameras or license plate readers, and the year-end table doesn't address causes. That's a question for the department — not a conclusion anyone can draw from this data.

3. More people home during the day? A hypothesis frequently offered for burglary declines in hybrid-work towns: occupied houses are unattractive targets. Plausible-sounding, completely untestable with this table, and we won't pretend otherwise.

What we'll watch

Whether the vandalism and forgery upticks persist into 2026, whether burglary holds at its new lower level through the summer, and what MBPD's quarterly updates show. The full table lives on the city's crime statistics page.

Your block knows things the table doesn't

The year-end numbers are the city's view from 30,000 feet. You have the ground truth. What's changed on your block — more cameras, better lighting, more daytime foot traffic, a break-in the numbers don't capture, or nothing at all? Hit reply and tell us; we read everything, and we'll share what we learn (no names, ever, without asking).

We track this story, and everything else worth knowing in MB and Hermosa, in the twice-weekly Pier to Pier newsletter.

General information, not advice.

Sources

  • Manhattan Beach Police Department, "2025 Group A NIBRS — Crime Breakdown" (year-end table) — https://www.manhattanbeach.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/56185/639071860355030000
  • City of Manhattan Beach, Crime Statistics page — https://www.manhattanbeach.gov/departments/police-department/crime-statistics
  • Council on Criminal Justice, "Crime Trends in U.S. Cities: Year-End 2025 Update," January 20, 2026 — https://counciloncj.org/crime-trends-in-u-s-cities-year-end-2025-update/
  • NPR, "Criminal justice experts explain why crime rates fell in 2025," December 26, 2025 — https://www.npr.org/2025/12/26/nx-s1-5646596/criminal-justice-experts-explain-why-crime-rates-fell-in-2025

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