2017 was record-low for homicides in New York City
2017 was record-low for homicides in New York City, with NYPD logging lowest number in nearly 70 years
BY THOMAS TRACY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Sunday, December 31, 2017, 3:39 PM
http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopo...er1n-4-web.jpgNYPD officers set up a perimeter in front of 635 Castle Hill Ave. in the Bronx where a man was stabbed to death on Dec. 16.
(KENDALL RODRIGUEZ/FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)
The NYPD’s gonna party like it’s 1959.
With just a few hours before the big ball drop in Times Square, the NYPD was expecting a major milestone — ending the year with fewer than 300 homicides.
Unofficial numbers show that the NYPD had investigated 290 homicides so far this year — a number the NYPD hasn’t seen in nearly 70 years, officials said.
“It is safe to say right now that New York hasn’t been like this since the 1950s,” Commissioner James O’Neill said on “Good Day New York” earlier this month.
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Cops investigated 45 fewer killings when compared to last year, where detectives investigated 335.
Yet last year’s figure still didn’t beat 2014, which saw a record-breaking 333 homicides — the lowest number in modern times.
No murders were reported in the city on Saturday or Sunday, cops said.
The latest killing was in the Bronx on Friday night, when Teddy Gibson was found sprawled out on Truxton St. and Worthen St. in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx about 10:20 p.m.
http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopo...er1n-2-web.jpgPolice Commissioner James O’Neill said “New York hasn’t been like this since the 1950s.”
(MARCUS SANTOS)
Gibson had been shot in the head at close to point-blank range, police sources said.
The 2017 numbers are a 61% drop from two decades ago, when there were 746 slayings — which was at the time considered a 30-year low.
Murders in the city peaked in 1990 with 2,245 homicides, a number that included the 87 lives lost in an inferno set by an arsonist at the Happy Land Social Club in the Bronx.
Shootings are also down for the year, officials said.
As of Thursday, the NYPD investigated 784 shootings — 204 fewer than the 988 recorded this time last year. That’s a 21% drop in shootings, cops said.
O’Neill has long credited the drop in crime to the department’s neighborhood policing initiative, where cops are given specific sectors and are instructed to reach out to residents in the area.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/...icle-1.3729733
