New York, NY – Murder Rate Climbed Up in the City

New York – Murder rates climbed this year in New York after many years of decline.

In New York City, where the city reported 579 murders through Dec. 24 – a 9.8 percent increase – officials said that the spike comes from an unusually large number of crimes known as reclassified homicides, where victims are shot or stabbed years ago, but did not die until this year. Thirty-five deaths so far this year are linked to old wounds, compared with an annual average of about a dozen.
Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said the increase would still be about 6 percent from the 2005 total of 539 murders, which was the city's lowest rate in more than 40 years. "There'd still be an increase," Browne said. "It's against a base that's one of the lowest in history."