Police plan to flood the toughest areas of New York with new recruits in an attempt to drive down the crime rate to historic lows as the city celebrates a record drop in murders in 2007.

New York, once dubbed the murder capital of America, recorded fewer than 500 murders in a single year for the first time since reliable record-keeping began in 1963. In the final hours of the year, the 2007 tally stood at 492, compared with the record high of 2,245 at the height of the crack epidemic in 1990.

Adding to residents’ sense of security is that fewer than 100 of last year’s murders were random killings by strangers. Almost all the high-profile murders last year, such as the killing of Linda Stein, the former manager of the Ramones, have led to the arrest of someone known to the victim.

Manhattan has become particularly safe, with fewer than 70 murders last year compared with 109 the year before. The 28th Precinct in the rapidly gentrifying Harlem, which once routinely recorded more than 100 murders a year, had just three.

Police plan to cut crime further by sending the entire class of new recruits from the police academy straight out into the most violent neighbourhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, such as Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York and Crown Heights. The 914 new recruits will double the number of officers assigned to Operation Impact, a five-year-old programme that targets high-crime areas.

However, in other big US cities such as Atlanta, Baltimore and Miami, the murder rate has risen because of a surge in gang violence and guns, although Chicago reported 435 killings up to Christmas Day - its lowest toll since 1965, when there were 395.

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