NEW YORK, once synonymous with violent crime, is on track to cut its murder rate from a peak of 2,245 to fewer than 500 this year.

The fall from the 1990 high reflects the city’s “zero-tolerance” policing and its strategy of flooding troubled areas with officers. The decline is boosting Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s chances of re-election in November as a Republican in a traditionally Democratic city.

Thomas Reppetto, president of the non-profit Citizens Crime Commission, said: “If you keep working at it, you can continue to reduce crime. The question, of course, is how low?”

Killings have fallen almost 17 per cent in the city so far this year, to 215 from 259 at the same time in 2004. An analysis by the Daily News predicted yesterday that, if the trend continues, New York would end the year with just 465 murders, compared with 570 last year.

The last time New York recorded fewer than 500 murders was in 1961, when there were 482. The murder rate jumped to 548 the following year, beginning an inexorable rise through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s that spawned numerous films about New York’s dangerous streets.

The killing of 2,749 people in the World Trade Centre attack on September 11, 2001, was excluded from the crime statistics. When Mr Bloomberg was elected after the 2001 attack, few thought that he would be able to cut crime. But Ray Kelly, his Police Commissioner, who had already done the job once before, said that crime was now at what people once thought were “impossibly low levels”.

FBI figures show that New York’s per capita murder rate is roughly half that of Los Angeles and Chicago, a third of Philadelphia’s and seven times lower than in Detroit. Crime has been falling in all categories at almost three times the national rate, and New York now ranks 221st on the FBI’s crime index of 240 American cities with a population of 100,000 or more.

The New York Police Department attributes its success to innovative policing, including swamping troubled “impact zones”. After a surge in shootings in the Bronx and north Brooklyn, 250 officers were reassigned to the areas. Mr Bloomberg has also cut crime in the worst schools by deploying police to the corridors

HOMICIDE RATES

Murders so far this year:

Los Angeles 238
New York 215
London 181
Washington DC 66
Murders per 100,000 of population (1997-99)
Washington DC 50.82
Moscow 18.2
New York 9.32
Belfast 5.23
London 2.36
Paris 2.21
Tokyo 1.17

(Sources Metropolitan Police, Home Office, LAPD, BBC, Washington Police)

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