New York City remained the nation’s safest big city in 2018 as the murder rate continued to drop. Rapes and hate crimes reported to the police rose sharply, the New York Times reports. Reported rapes rose 22 percent, which some experts attributed to more people reporting attacks during the #MeToo movement. Hate crimes rose 5 percent, with larger increases in attacks against black and Jewish people. Murder and other violent crimes decreased, continuing a 28-year trend. New York’s murder rate hovered just above 3 per 100,000 people in 2018, well below the three other largest U.S. cities. Los Angeles’s murder rate is expected to be slightly over 6 per 100,000, Chicago’s just under 20 and Houston’s just over 14. Criminologist Franklin Zimring of the University of California, Berkeley said the city may find it hard to reduce violent crime much further. “At some point, rates of life-threatening violence … are going to scrape bottom,” he said.
As of Dec. 30, there were 287 homicides in New York, down five from last year. In 1990, there were 2,262 murders. Robberies in 2018 were also down by nearly 8 percent from the previous year, and shooting incidents decreased by 4 percent. The number of people shot fell to 894, from 933. Some 1,760 rapes were reported as of Dec. 23, compared to 1,438 at the same time last year. “We view it as good news because it means that more people are feeling confident to come forward and report the rape,” said Sonia Ossorio of the National Organization for Women of New York. On the overall crime drop, criminologists cited factors such as more effective policing, improved technology, violence-prevention programs and demographic and social changes. Experts said the drop in violent crime continued even as the police department has scaled back enforcement of marijuana laws and ended the practice of stopping and frisking large numbers of young men in high-crime neighborhoods.