Strict gun laws and specialized programs targeting dangerous areas combined with and good old-fashioned policing have kept crime on the decline in New York City for much of the decade, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday.
So far this year, there have been 461 murders, which means the city is on track to have the lowest number since record keeping began in the 1960s. Last year, there were 522 murders and 496 the year before. Cases continue to be solved at a steady 70 percent rate.
Overall crime is down in the city 11 percent from last year and 35 percent from 2001 when Bloomberg took office. The only major crime on the rise is felony assault, which was up 2 percent this year, according to the city’s CompStat program, which tracks crime statistics daily.
The city “is safer today than in any point in modern history,” Bloomberg said at a news conference following the graduation of a new police academy class.
The figures reflect a nationwide trend. Preliminary FBI crime figures for the first half of 2009 show crime falling across the country. Murder and manslaughter fell 10 percent for the first half of the year.
Bloomberg said New York’s rates are particularly impressive. Twenty years ago, the city was considered dangerous and rife with crime.
The city’s homicide rate reached an all-time high of 2,245 in 1990, making it the murder capital of the nation. Since then, the rate has plummeted, the decline in part has been attributed to the placement of most graduating police officers in higher-crime areas known as “impact zones,” identified through CompStat.
Most of the officers who graduated Monday will go into the impact program, which has about 1,700 officers.
Bloomberg handed the credit for the decline to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, whom he said has used the data to make effective changes that keep crime down. He also praised New Yorkers, whose tax dollars allow the city to have the nation’s largest police force.
Kelly also was praised for his counterterrorism efforts, as the trials for Sept. 11 terrorist suspects loom. There have been several attempted attacks in the years since the Sept. 11 attack, but none successful.
“We always assume the worst,” Kelly said. “We are always trying to look over the horizon.”
Kelly said the decline in crime is primarily due to solid police work. He cited as an example an incident early Monday, in which two officers were patrolling the stairwells of a Coney Island housing project. They came upon men drinking, and one of the men drew a 9mm pistol. The officer, Oswaldo Estillo, grabbed the gun and dislodged the magazine, diffusing the situation without firing a weapon. The armed suspect was arrested.
The academy class of 250 speaks 28 different languages and is 40 percent white, 33 percent Hispanic, 15 percent black and 12 percent Asian. Bloomberg initially canceled the January 2010 class as a cost cutting measure before economic stimulus dollars allowed the city to hire a smaller class of about 100 officers. Bloomberg has also reduced the number of overall officers.