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Overall, there
were 101,606 crimes that police said they knew about during
2016, down 4 percent from 2015, police said.
There were 335 murders reported last year, down 5 percent from
the 352 murders a year earlier, police said. The record for the
fewest since the city started keeping reliable numbers in 1963
was 328 murders in 2014.
By way of comparison, Chicago, which has about one-third as many
residents as New York's 8.6 million people, recorded 762 murders
last year, more than twice as many killings as in New York.
That spike prompted President-elect Donald Trump to suggest on
Monday that the city needed federal help.
The trendlines in New York pointed downward in nearly all
categories of reported crime, as shootings fell 12 percent,
rapes fell 1 percent, robberies fell 9 percent and burglaries
fell 15 percent.
Reports of felony-level assaults were up 2 percent, while
reports of grand larcenies were flat, according to police
numbers.
Police, politicians and criminologists have hotly debated the
reasons behind the sharp drop in U.S. crime since the early
1990s, when New York City had more than 2,000 murders a year.
They have put forward explanations such as changing tactics,
better data collection or even a reduction in lead poisoning.
New York City Police Commissioner James O'Neill credited last
year's reductions to a "laser-like precision" on gangs and to
the department's neighborhood policing program, which is aimed
at improving relations between officers and the communities they
patrol.
In a statement, O'Neil said, "2016 was the safest year ever in
the history of New York City."
(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Scott Malone and Lisa
Shumaker)
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