NYC Homicides Drop Sharply, Again

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/29/nyregion/city-homicides-drop-sharply-again-police-cite-new-antigang-strategy.html?hp

by GabrielF00 • 13 years ago

64 68 13 years ago

pdog• 13 years ago

I wonder how much of the drop in crime rates can be attributed to Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn increasingly becoming a haven for the superrich and poorer people being priced out. An "outsize share" of the violence is in East New York, Brooklyn, and South Jamaica, Queen.

yummyfajitas2• 13 years ago

Probably some of it, but probably not a lot. The very poor are not actually priced out of NYC. NYC heavily taxes the middle class and rich in order to pay certain poor people to remain in the city (including very desirable areas).

The main people being priced out are the middle class, not the poor.

m0th87• 13 years ago

To be fair, you don't just apply and you're in. You have to be in an industry the city wants to grow, and even then it's a bit of a lottery, highly dependent on how long you've lived in the City.

The absurdity of it though is that you can stay in the subsidized housing program long after you switch industries and make bank.

simonholroyd• 13 years ago

Priced out, but apparently also losing jobs while lower incomes gained jobs: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/up/51308385

I agree with you I don't think the income gap is the cause of lower crime. Also these crime rates are dropping absolutely not per capita, right? Is there any data to show that the actual population of lower income (or even middle income) residents has dropped? All the news focuses on the variance in income distribution. NYC could be getting richer while still taking in more low income residents.

king_jester• 13 years ago

It's really difficult to get into section 8 housing and private developers have been snatching up rent stabilized and controlled apts as much as possible, renovating them to end the rent price controls, and then putting them back on the market. There's also considerable desire to buy and develop new condos on properties that used to house lower rent apts. To that end, the very poor are priced out since they are unlikely to get section 8 and are more likely to see an existing apt they have got bought out and/or get the priced raised.

skizo18• 13 years ago

Well that is a very cynical way to look at it; you should remember that overall crime rate has been dropping for a couple decades now.

brown9-2• 13 years ago

I don't think that trend has sped up considerably since 2012 to affect such a large drop in the year over year number.

rm999• 13 years ago

The poverty rate has been going up in NYC as the crime rate has been going down: http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2012/sep/20/new-york-...

nazgulnarsil• 13 years ago

the quality of life of someone living in poverty has been increasing.

newsum2• 13 years ago

cannot agree more. in my opinion, regardless of the statistics drop in crime is primarily attributed to exuberant increase of the cost of living especially in the historically impoverished neighborhoods from the 1980s and on. (i.e. Bushwick, Williamsburg, Bedford-Stuyvesant etc...)

gnosis2• 13 years ago

There was a very interesting article[1] recently about the epidemiological link between leaded gasoline and crime.

[1] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...

w1ntermute• 13 years ago

There's also the link between abortion legalization and the subsequent drop in crime, mentioned in Freakonomics.

nhebb• 13 years ago

The Mother Jones article addresses that. You should read it. It's an interesting theory.

specialist3• 13 years ago

The leaded gasoline theory better explains observations (gathered data). The abortion rights theory is still very interesting, and worth discussion, but leaded gasoline is currently more right, to be amended and supplanted as we learn more.

Science!

showerst• 13 years ago

Thirdly, there's also the effect of the newer policing techniques, like the 'broken windows' approach. It's likely some mix of all three.

dfc• 13 years ago

Attention HN Homeowners: The MJ article links to a short page about lead pipes in houses. Sadly MJ sticks with the scary story but devotes very little attention to replacing the lead service to your house. The good news is that as far as house troubles go replacing a lead service pipe is not that bad and your local water authority can probably help out a lot.

Call your water authority and ask about lead abatement programs. While you are on the phone with them ask if they can send someone to your house and test the water for lead (some do some dont). Most municipalities have programs to help homeowners replace the lead service. The most prevalent is a program where the municipality pays for the lead service replacement and you slowly pay off the debt with monthly payments added to your water bill. Some municipalities have grant money so that they can replace the lead service pipe for houses with children.

Given the clipart picture of galvanized pipes it is no surprise that they did not do a stellar job covering lead abatement programs.

bluedino4• 13 years ago

Except that in far too many areas, crime is still increasing. Are they painting houses with lead paint again?

philwelch2• 13 years ago

There's another interesting article that says--actually, it's all about the price of cocaine: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2011/11/co...

olympus• 13 years ago

Everyone is so quick to try to assign cause to any phenomenon. I'm going to remind everyone that correlation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for causation, and there is often a significant time difference between the cause and the effect. I'm not saying that the stop and frisk tactics did or didn't work, but saying that stop and frisk wasn't the cause because stop and frisks were lower in this time period isn't valid. Maybe the increased stop and frisks in 2012 got the criminals off the street that were going to commit murders in 2013. Again, I'm not saying that stop and frisk is a good or legal idea, but the argument that some people are using to dismiss it is a flawed argument and needs some more work.

pinaceae• 13 years ago

419 murders in 2012 in NYC, 154 in 2013 already.

London had 99 murders in 2012.

chaz3• 13 years ago

When did this become a contest?

emiliobumachar• 13 years ago

I can't make sense of crime statistics except when comparing either different times (article), or different places (your parent comment)

geogra4• 13 years ago

NYC's extremely low murder rate for a big city in the USA is really nothing special compared to other major cities world wide.

I think the context is useful in comparison.

mikeash• 13 years ago

The USA's murder rate is about 4x the UK's, so it's no big surprise that any given city's rate might be about 4x as well.

bluedino4• 13 years ago

Chicago had 532 murders in 2012. With 1/3rd the population of NYC

ThomPete• 13 years ago

One word...gentrification.

vacri3• 13 years ago

While the reduction is indeed something to be pleased about, remember that in criminology, it's not unusual to see blips like this. It might be a blip, or it might be the start of a new trend. Too early to tell.

Sanddancer• 13 years ago

This has been a very long running trend here. Since 1990, crime in US cities in general has been dropping like a rock.

vacri3• 13 years ago

Absolutely, but they haven't been dropping 25% every year. You still get short-term rises and falls on long-term trends.

chaz3• 13 years ago

To provide a little bit of historical perspective on NYC's murders:

  1990: 2,262
  1993: 1,927
  1998:   629
  2001:   649
  2012:   417
  2013:   145 YTD

http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/...

larrys2• 13 years ago

Would be interesting if numbers were available to see what happened in terms of the number of people assigned to homicide division. Did they remain the same (meaning they can spend more time say on each crime) or did they go down?

jbooth• 13 years ago

The homicide division doesn't prevent murders, they solve them.

People generally credit methodology changes under the term 'community policing' for the turn-around. Basically, the idea is that rather than just riding in, cracking skulls, slapping cuffs on once a night, engage with the community more, address more stuff like noise complaints and vandalism, to build relations with the community and coincidentally crack down on the same troublemakers a lot of the time. In theory (and in practice), it turns out to be more effective at stopping crime from happening than the deterrent factor of riding in lights blazing every night.

(This isn't to say that NYC cops are perfect or that stop-and-frisk doesn't happen all the damn time, just outlining the general theory behind community policing)

jacobr• 13 years ago

You need to consider all improvements in trauma care since 1990. Some victims that would have died in 1990 would make it today.

bluedino4• 13 years ago

Does anyone have the #'s for say, shootings?

krschultz• 13 years ago

If you read the linked PDF, murders are down 83% while shooting victims are down 81% compared to 1993. Meanwhile, robberies are down 79%, rapes are down 54%, assaults are down 52%, etc. Everything is down 50-80% in the last 20 years, not just deaths. I don't think the facts support your narrative.

rdouble• 13 years ago

A friend of mine is a specialist trauma doctor in NYC and claims to only work 1.5 hours per day because hardly anything happens.

danvk• 13 years ago

Do you have numbers from before 1990? The late 80s and early 90s were a particularly violent time in NYC.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

The 70's were no picnic neither.

drpgq• 13 years ago

"Police officials also credited their efforts at identifying and monitoring abusive husbands whose behavior seemed poised to turn lethal."

I found that interesting. I always felt that for domestics there wasn't a lot you could do, but I guess that's not the case.

specialist3• 13 years ago

Apparently at least some of the crime statistics have been fudged.

The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation http://www.amazon.com/The-Crime-Numbers-Game-Manipulation/dp...

So now I don't know what to believe. My guess is that violent crime has gone down, but not as fast as the police depts have reported.

chaz3• 13 years ago

This American Life did a story about this [1] not too long ago, and featured an officer who recorded conversations from NYPD supervisors instructing officers to downgrade or not report crimes so the precinct looked better. There's also another story about the use of CompStat in the NYT. [2]

For the context of this post, however, I think it's fair to assume that murders are getting pretty accurately reported, since it's hard to downgrade or not report a murder.

[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/414/r... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/nyregion/new-york-police-d...

GabrielF00• 13 years ago

David Simon of The Wire has talked about this. You can fudge statistics for things like robbery, burglary, rape, etc. by reporting them as lesser crimes or otherwise making them go away, but it's much more difficult to fudge the stats when it comes to murder, because murders are so visible.

specialist3• 13 years ago

I don't remember where I heard this, but one journalist/investigator compared crime reports with hospital admissions and bodies in the morgue. They didn't match, eg underreporting.

The most extreme example I've heard is Disney World in Florida, where the body is removed from the premises (jurisdiction) before a report is filed, so they can keep the fatality counts down.

rwhitman• 13 years ago

My friend was hit by a car the other night crossing the street in Brooklyn (just bruised thankfully). It was a hit and run and when the NYPD came, they did everything possible to try and dissuade him from making a report. To the point where we had a mini confrontation with the cop in order to just get him to file the paperwork. It really seemed like he had outside pressure put on him to not file.

So I wouldn't be surprised if the NYPD is fudging the numbers somehow, though homicide is a tough thing to hide in crime stats I'd imagine...

philwelch2• 13 years ago

In most places a physician has to sign a death certificate for every death. The physician can either be the attending physician when the patient died during care or a medical examiner otherwise. The death certificate often has a place for "cause of death", and it's the medical examiner who officially designates a homicide. So it's hard (though certainly not impossible) for homicides to disappear from the records entirely.

runawaybottle• 13 years ago

Here's David Simon (creator of The Wire) explaining how crime stats are 'juked'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw#t=19m00s

I'll try to paraphrase a key part:

He did acknowledge that while you can use various tricks to hide crime (turn robberies into larcenies), it's very difficult to massage the murder rate numbers since a state medical examiner usually classifies the death.

So how do you bring the murder rate down? They basically instilled a curfew in poorer neighborhoods, and swept the streets every night. Baltimore cops locked up something like a 100,000 people, in a city with about 650,000 people, most never charged with anything.

Definitely check the video out.

zeroexzeroone• 13 years ago

Runs faster in memory, allegedly.

bluedino4• 13 years ago

What's the drug scene like in New York these days? First you had heroin, then the rise of crack cocaine, but since then the murder rate has gone lower and lower (early 90's)

There's a very close link between the drug trade and inner-city murders.

wavefunction2• 13 years ago

This is an insightful post. The numbers posted above start at 1990 which was the tail-end of the decades of heroin, cocaine and crack epidemics in NYC. It looks like crime is back down towards a rate similar to 1965:

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm

Not sure about the exactness of these statistics, just a quick google result that seems legit.

wavefunction2• 13 years ago

What the hell was this zeroed for? There is absolutely nothing in this post that is factually incorrect or presented in an offensive manner.

HN really should show who's voting on posts.

zaroth• 13 years ago

Buried in the 2nd to last paragraph:

"The program relies heavily on tracking the online activities of neighborhood gangs, in effect, trying to prevent shootings before they happen."

NYC Homicides Drop Sharply, Again

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