As his first month as police commissioner under Mayor de Blasio winds down, Bill Bratton is already facing some sobering news — a 33 percent spike in murders across the city.
According to the latest statistics released Tuesday, there have been 28 homicides so far this year compared to 21 in the same period last year.
That puts the city on course for at least one murder a day.
Last year, the Big Apple racked up 334 homicides in 365 days, the lowest in the city’s recorded history.
“I think Bratton needs to be concerned about the homicide numbers, but he’s a field commander at heart,” said a law-enforcement source. “If there’s something egregiously wrong, he will go straight to the source — the precinct or precincts that are problematic — and fix it right away.”
The source blamed de Blasio’s anti-stop-and-frisk push for the uptick in slayings.
“This is the residual effect of de Blasio’s backlash against stop-and-frisk,’’ the source said. “Cops aren’t stopping people and taking guns off the street, which emboldens the criminals,” the source said.
Another veteran investigator agreed, saying, “Cops are reticent about making stops because they don’t want to get punished.”
Police statistics also for the past 26 days — the most recent figures available — show that gun recoveries are way down. There was a drop of 31.1 percent, or 208 guns recovered compared to 302 last year.
Since this past Jan. 1, there have also been increases in rapes and felony assaults — and decreases in robberies, burglaries and grand larcenies.
There were 100 rapes as opposed to 95 during the same period last year — a 5.3 percent jump.
Felony assaults rose 12.1 percent, with 1,263 compared to 1,240.
The numbers for grand-larceny auto also surged: There were 524 vehicles stolen, compared with 466 in 2013.
But there was a silver lining in the categories of robbery, burglary and grand larceny — all of which showed decreases.
Robbery is down 15.1 percent; burglary has dropped 4.6 percent, and grand larceny is down 5.3 percent.
“Robberies are down because it’s too damn cold to go out and rob someone,” said a police source. “When it warms up, the number of robberies will go up, too.”
There’s also been a substantial reduction in shootings and shooting victims for the first 26 days.
There were 66 shootings compared with 80 during the same period last year. Shooting victims were down to 75 from 92 last year.
NYPD Spokesman Stephen Davis said, “One cannot take an arbitrary 26 days, out of a 365-day year and draw a reliable inference for a yearly assessment.”