NYC on pace for record-low number of murders

updated 8:58 p.m. ET Sept. 18, 2009

NEW YORK - More New Yorkers are out of work, and the cash-strapped city isn't graduating a new class of police cadets this year. And yet crime is going down — way down.

New York City is heading toward a record-low number of murders this year, and overall crime is also down, the New York Police Department said Friday.

The NYPD projects about 457 murders this year, the lowest total since the department first started keeping records in 1962.

And, overall crime is down nearly 12 percent from 2008, and 40 percent since 2001, the NYPD said.

No answer for decline
The downward trend is mystifying criminologists who say crime usually rises when times are tough.

"I don't have an answer to it," said Andrew Karmen, a sociology professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "The poor and the unemployed are not fed up, or in despair. They still retain hope that the economy will turn."

The nation's largest police department will continue to work diligently to combat crime, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said this week.

"I'm often asked, how low can crime go and my answer is always the same: one crime is one too many," he said.

City's murder rate low
The city had about six murders on average per 100,000 people last year, a rate among the lowest in the U.S., according to FBI crime statistics. In 2008, New Orleans had 64, St. Louis 47 and Los Angeles 10 per 100,000 people, according to the FBI.

There is still room for New York's rate to decline, compared to London, where there are two murders per 100,000 people and Tokyo where there's one.

Criminologists consider the murder rate as a benchmark to forecast the overall crime rate. But they also say the annual comparisons don't always reflect long-term trends and can be skewed by unusual events, like the Happy Land social club arson in the Bronx that killed 87 people in 1990.

Karmen said poverty and unemployment are normally key factors in determining whether crimes will rise and fall; the city's unemployment rate in September is its highest in 16 years.

During the downturn of the 1970s and '80s, New York was considered dangerous and run-down. The city's homicide rate reached a high of 2,245 in 1990, tops in the nation. But crime has steadily decreased, and in 2007 the city had its fewest murders since comparable record-keeping began in the 1960s.

As of Friday, New York City police reported 325 murders. If that rate continues through the end of the year, the total will beat the previous low, 497 murders in 2007.

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