A bloody four-week stretch has helped drive murders up by more than 25% across New York compared to a year ago, according to NYPD statistics.
The city saw 38 killings over the past four weeks compared to 19 over the same time frame last year. So far, there have been 32 more murders this year than in the same period in 2019, with 159 through Sunday.
Shootings have also increased this year, with 394 as of Sunday compared to 317 in the same period last year.
The spike continues a trend that started at the beginning of New York’s coronavirus lockdown in March, and has persisted as anti police-brutality protests raged across the city following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The overall number of the top seven index crimes — murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and auto theft — is down slightly this year by about 2%. But that’s because the category that sees the most crimes, grand larceny, is down by nearly 19%.
“I think that that can mask some storm clouds,” Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said.
He attributed the jump in part to the state’s bail reform laws, which require suspects be released without bail on virtually all misdemeanor and several felony charges, most of them non-violent.
“We’ve had a very interesting, to say the least, six months, between bail reform, COVID for six months, and now the fallout from Minneapolis,” Shea said. “When you look at the last month or so, we are trending in a very difficult direction in terms of gun violence specifically, and that has had the impact on the homicides.”
Burglaries have climbed citywide by 47% for the year so far, with 6,595 incidents versus 4,480 in the same period in 2019.
Auto thefts continued a year-long trend of increases with more than 60% over the same period in 2019.