NEW YORK CITY — The number of shootings and serious crimes in New York City is down slightly this year, paving the way for another year of record low violence in the Big Apple, DNAinfo New York has learned.
NYPD statistics reveal that there is a 2.5 percent decline in shootings through last Sunday — from 1,069 last year to 1,042 for the same period this year. The drop in gun violence dovetails with a 2.5 percent decline in serious criminal activity overall this year, the figures show.
Last summer, there were fears that the warm weather was going to launch a surge of violence and gunplay, particularly among the city’s loose-knit gang members and crews.
But the NYPD countered with its “Summer All Out” initiative that sent thousands of extra officers into the streets.
Murders, however, are up 6.7 percent — from 298 last year to 318 through Sunday. Police officials say that shooting statistics are as important as the murder numbers because every shooting victim was a potential homicide.
Rape is also up 5.2 percent, from 1,243 to 1,308 reported incidents. And robbery, which is considered a bellwether category, is up just 1.7 percent, from 15,011 to 15,267.
Those increases were countered by an 11 percent decline in burglaries, a 1.6 percent drop in grand larcenies and a 2.8 percent reduction in reported auto thefts, data shows.
Overall, there were 95,392 serious crimes reported through last Sunday compared to 97,853 for the same period last year.
Despite a year that saw the NYPD politically and literally under fire — two of New York’s Finest were shot and killed in the line of duty — crime has remained at low levels not seen since the early 1960s.
This occurred without the NYPD relying heavily on stopping and frisking New Yorkers, a technique that has plummeted in use in recent years after the tactic was employed on hundreds of thousands of residents just five years ago.
“Viewed historically, crime is ridiculously low, especially if you recall the days in the '80s and '90s when no one could imagine numbers like this,” said Thomas Reppetto, former president of the Citizens’ Crime Commission and an expert on the NYPD and American policing.
In fact, sources say, last month had the fewest shootings of any November since the 1993 advent of the Compstat program, which the NYPD uses to track crime stats.
“And now, the figures have remained about the same, a little up or a little down, for several years as the NYPD continues to hold the line,” Reppetto said.
