New York City saw a steep drop in murders and gun violence for the first half of 2024 compared to last year as police took an “historic” number of guns off the streets, NYPD officials said Wednesday.
Overall crime dropped 2% from the same period period last year, officials said — though the number of reported rapes, robberies and assaults were up from January to June, according to the latest police department statistics.
As of June 30, murders in the city dropped by 17%, from 208 last year to 171, while the number of shooting incidents fell by 8%, from 482 to 441.
“[The cops] have one mission: to go after the bad guys so they don’t do bad things to good people in this city,” Mayor Adams said at a Wednesday afternoon press conference at police headquarters about the latest crime statistics. “We put in place many initiatives and those initiatives are working.”
The drop in violence stemmed, in part, from the massive amount of firearms the NYPD has seized over the last year, Police Commissioner Edward Caban said.
“Since 2022 we have taken 13,000 firearms off the streets of the city with 3,400 guns seized in the past six months,” Caban said. “These weapons will never again threaten innocent New Yorkers.”
Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael LiPetri said the amount of gun seizures were “historic.”
The numbers of guns taken hadn’t been seen in 29 years, when there were four times more shootings in the city than today, LiPetri said.
Crime reductions were seen across the board, from precincts to NYCHA housing facilities to the subway system, where Gov. Hochul called in the National Guard to backstop the NYPD to keep an eye out for crimes and do bag checks.
By the end of June, there was a 6% drop in overall crime in the city’s transit system, officlals said.
Yet, while murders and shootings were down, assaults and robberies remained up for the year, statistics showed. Felony assaults rose to 14,364 from 15,545 in the first half of 2023, while robberies increased to 8,211 from 7,828.
The number of rapes in the city also rose from the same time period last year — 11%. There were 814 rape reports filed this year by the end of June, cops said. This time last year, there were 733 — 81 fewer.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said his team will be tackling the increase head-on and have brought in more detectives to the department’s Special Victims Squad to do the job.
“We have upstaffed our special victims unit tremendously,” he said. “We’re getting new talent in and we haven’t seen staffing like this in years. We’re really taking it seriously.”
Since the beginning of the year, there have been drops in four of the seven crime categories tracked in the NYPD’s CompStat system. Crime reductions were also seen in burglaries and grand larcenies, or nonviolent thefts of $1,000 or more.
The number of car thefts in the city, which had jumped in recent years spurred on by a viral TikTok challenge that shows teenagers how easy it is to steal Kias and Hyundais, has also dropped so far this year by 10%, cops said.
Police saw 758 fewer vehicles being stolen off city streets as theft numbers dropped from 7,525 to 6,797, cops said. At the same time, cops cracked down on car thieves, arresting 200 more than this year, from 874 to 1,074.
The drop in crime was coupled with a 14% jump in overall arrests, statistics show.
With the hottest — and sometimes the most violent — months ahead this summer, the NYPD plans to implement its “deployment zone” plan where the department floods high crime areas with police officers in order to tamp down crime.
Under this plan in 2023, New York saw a 28% drop in shootings and a 19% drop in murders in July and August, according to NYPD statistics.
“We’ve identified about 10 square miles in this city that can account for 25% of the shootings,” LiPetri said. “That’s where thousands of officers are going to be placed.”