New York records another drop in crime

[billbuckhead]

Crime Numbers Keep Dropping Across the City

By AL BAKER
Published: December 31, 2005

Crime has fallen across New York City for the 17th consecutive year, with subway crime down by more than 5 percent from last year and the number of recorded murders virtually certain to be the fewest in any single year since 1963, new Police Department statistics show.

As of yesterday, there had been 537 killings in the city, according to the department's latest marking-period reports that are issued weekly. That is down from 566 in the same period last year. And it is down from 649 in all of 2001, when joblessness surged, anxiety from Sept. 11 was present and a budget crisis prompted a reduction in numbers of city police officers. In that year, some citizens and criminal justice experts predicted a bottoming out of the crime downturn as the police force took on new counterterrorism responsibilities.
New York reported its greatest number of murders in 1990, when 2,245 people lost their lives by violence.

In 2005, in addition to murders, numbers for rape, felony assault, burglary and grand larceny all fell, the department said.

Auto theft, which, like murder, is considered a reliable indicator of crime patterns because there is little discretion in how to classify it and little reluctance in reporting it, fell by nearly 12 percent.
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<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/31/nyregion/31crime.html?ex=1293685200&en=d1693f6e10fff53d&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss>

Proof strong gun laws work.