The NYPD is reporting that crime this year is again headed for historic lows. The city’s cops have been breaking records so often lately, they’re starting to sound like a broken record themselves.
Still, no one should take their enormous success for granted.
On Thursday, the department reported not a single homicide for six straight days, adding that the city may be on track for fewer murders in 2018 than 2017. As of Dec. 16, the NYPD logged 278 murders, three fewer than by that time last year.
Compare that to what happened in 1990, when 2,245 people were killed. If this year’s numbers hold, it will represent a near 90 percent drop from back then — as much a reason to rejoice as to be utterly shocked.
There’s more: All other major crimes in the city, except rape, have also fallen. While 91,734 major felonies were reported so far this year, the comparable number for 2017 was 95,215.
Brooklyn, too, has had a record year. As DA Eric Gonzalez noted Thursday, the borough will end 2018 with the fewest murders since record-keeping began in the 1970s.
So far, Brooklyn has seen 97 murders; last year it saw 110. No year on record has ever witnessed fewer than 100.
“Working with the NYPD, we are continuing to see declines in most crimes, with another historic low in homicides,” Gonzalez said.
New Yorkers are well familiar with crime’s downward trajectory for the past few decades, starting with Bill Bratton’s tenure as NYPD boss under Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the advent of CompStat and Broken Windows policing. Ray Kelly drove it down further under Mayor Mike Bloomberg, before Bratton returned and did likewise under Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Now Commissioner James O’Neill — and his skilled, devoted rank and file — are pushing the envelope further still, using smart techniques like community policing.
They say good things don’t last forever, but the NYPD may prove that wrong yet.