The American city saw three times fewer homicides in 2018 than the previous year. Never has the number of murders been so low since the 1950s.
A New York policeman in Times Square.
DR/Photo d’illustration, Keystone
New York saw 289 homicides in 2018, three fewer than in 2017. This marks a new record for the lowest number of murders committed in the city since the early 1950s, according to figures released Thursday by police.
The number of murders has fallen by nearly 45% over the past ten years. In 1990, a record year on the rise, the city recorded 2,245 homicides.
After seeing an 8% increase in the number of murders in the first half of the year, New York recorded a historic end to the year. The city lived, in mid-October, its first weekend without shooting for 25 years.
Community policing
At a press conference Thursday, Mayor Bill de Blasio praised the work of the police. He said the good crime figures in New York were, in part, due to the new community policing strategy put in place in 2015.
Neighborhood Policing consists in particular of assigning police officers to defined areas over time, as well as strengthening links with the population of each district to better identify needs and promote cooperation.
Shadows on the board
Behind the drop in the number of homicides, as well as the sharp drop in thefts with violence or threats (-7.7%) and car thefts (-4%), two shadows on the table, firstly the jump of 22 , 4% of the number of rapes.
“An act that was so far insufficiently reported is finally dealt with,” commented Bill de Blasio, considering that there was a #MeToo effect and that more victims today dared to file a rape complaint. For him, the increase would therefore not correspond to an upsurge in rapes, but to a better statistical assessment of the phenomenon.
Another downside, the 7% increase in the number of crimes and offenses of a racial, religious or sexual orientation, which the head of the investigating cell, Dermot Shea, estimated at 361 during the press conference.
Posted: 01/03/2019, 8:34 p.m.
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