Crime in New York City is dropping. And dropping fast.
Murders, which had been falling gradually over the previous three years, dropped sharply, by nearly a fifth, in 1994. Over all, 350 fewer people were slain in 1994 than in the year before, and 650 fewer than in 1990, when murders, many of them fueled by the crack epidemic, reached a peak.
Shootings dropped by more than 15 percent, the latest police statistics show. And virtually every type of reported felony declined in frequency last year, with auto theft, grand larceny, burglary and robbery all dropping by better than 10 percent.
True, violent crime remains a constant menace of city life. The nearly 1,600 homicides that were committed in 1994 are still about four times the 390 killings that the city recorded in 1960. And a growing number of crimes are committed by teen-agers, whose vicious and often random acts of violence have raised fear to a level that statistics cannot overcome.
But coming after the staggering increases in crimes through the late 1980's -- a lethal period that culminated in mid-1990 with a string of senseless killings and a tabloid headline plea to Mayor David N. Dinkins to "Do Something, Dave" -- the latest figures show a surprising reversal.
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Even Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who took office with a pledge to crack down on street-level drug dealing and a variety of "quality of life" offenses, says his policies and the aggressive tactics of Police Commissioner William J. Bratton can explain only about half the decline in crime rates.
"Nobody can be sure exactly what is going on," he said in an interview last week.