Murders have dropped by up to 20% in some major US cities — including the Big Apple — so far this year, according to a new report.
New York City has seen a 15% dip in killings in the first three months of 2024 compared to the same period last year, the Wall Street Journal said.
The five boroughs had 88 murders in that time period, a significant dip over the 104 in 2023, the outlet said.
“There’s just a ton of places that you can point to that are showing widespread, very positive trends,” said Jeff Asher, a data analyst for consultants AH Datalytics, which compiled the numbers, to the outlet.
“Nationally you’re seeing a very similar situation to what you saw in the mid-to-late 90s,” Asher said. “But it’s potentially even larger in terms of the percentage and number of the drops.”
Murders spiked during the pandemic, with the numbers attributed to school closings and civil unrest stemming from the Minneapolis police custody death of George Floyd.
“The police went to sleep,” Georgia State University criminology professor Dean Dabney told the outlet. “The prosecution and the courts went to sleep, and the jails and prisons let people out. So you had an ideal situation for criminals.”
The numbers started to dip last year and are following suit so far in major US cities in 2024, with Boston seeing a whopping 82% drop in homicides to lead the list, the outlet said.
Columbus, Ohio, followed with a 58% dip and San Antonio, Texas, with a 50% drop, while San Diego, Calif., and Nashville, Tenn., were next on the list with 48% and 44% fewer killings, respectively.
The New York City stats differ slightly from NYPD figures released earlier this month.
The police department showed a bigger drop in murders through the end of March — 82 this year compared to 99 over the same period last year, for a 17% decrease.
But New Yorkers say they remain concerned about crime in the Big Apple, particularly in the wake of a series of subway attacks that prompted the NYPD to dispatch 800 more cops into the transit system for a week-long initiative to target farebeaters earlier this month.
And despite the dip in homicides, NYPD crime stats show an uptick in robbery, with 4.3% more so far this year over 2023, and felony assaults, which have gone up 3.8% so far this year.
According to the Journal, some cities nationwide also saw rises in murders as of early April, including Denver, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.
But the general trend remained promising, the report found.