No, but homicides are an important benchmark because there is consistency in what constitutes a homicide and murder is hard to brush under the rug or categorize as a lesser crime. If homicides decrease it is a good indicator of overall safety of a city.

With that said, theft seems to be getting worse in many places and that is probably a direct result of lighter sentencing for petty theft.

The vast majority of homicides happen between people who already know each other, so actually homicide rates say nothing about crime within geographic boundaries so much as crime within existing social groups.

Then it stands to reason that reporting on crimes in this or that city is mostly nonsense reporting, it doesn't convey any information that's useful to anyone.