Pubdate: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: William K. Rashbaum RISING MURDER RATE DEFIES LATEST PUSH AGAINST CRIME Despite a new, aggressive antinarcotics program and an increase in quality-of-life summonses, New York City's murder rate is still running substantially ahead of last year's. From January through March, there were about 13 percent more killings than there were in the same period in 1999, Police Department statistics show. But police officials said yesterday that the murder rate began to decline after March 17, when they put in place a series of measures focusing on the Bronx, where the number of killings had almost doubled. And they noted that most other violent crime was down. The number of homicides for all of last year increased 6 percent over 1998. Since the start of this year, the rate continued to rise, notwithstanding a $24 million program called Operation Condor that began in January and is aimed at bringing the murder rate down by focusing on low-level drug crimes, and a 12 percent increase in summonses for violations like public urination and drinking. In previous years, a focus on such quality-of-life offenses has been credited for the record declines in crime during the Giuliani administration. Police officials and criminologists could provide few explanations for the increase in the murder rate, other than a simple assessment that after the roughly 70 percent drop in overall reported crime in the last seven years, the numbers had nowhere to go but up. The numbers tend to reverse themselves anytime they hit an extreme, whether it is the 2,290 homicides reported in the city in 1990 or the 630 in 1998, said James Alan Fox, the Lipman Professor of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. "It's not necessarily time for finger pointing," he said. "Police took credit when crime started coming down probably more than they deserve, and they're probably getting more blame than they deserve when it starts going up." The statistics released this week show that there have been 187 murders from Jan. 1 through March 31, up from 165 during the same period last year. While the percentage of drug-related homicides has remained fairly constant, the number of people killed indoors is climbing, suggesting that the focus on drug crimes and low-level offenses may not meet with the same success that it has in the past, officials said. Despite the increase in homicides and a small increase in rapes, overall violent crime dropped 7.5 percent during the first three months of the year, with citywide declines in robbery, felony assault, burglary, larceny and car theft, the statistics show. The rising murder rate has been driven by the sharp increase in killings in the Bronx, where 61 people were killed in the first three months of this year, compared with 38 last year, an increase of 60.5 percent. In response, Garry F. McCarthy, the department's deputy commissioner for operations, prepared a set of measures on March 17 to drive the numbers down. The program included more uniformed officers in violence-prone areas, increased domestic-violence programs, two new teams of undercover investigators taken from a federal task force to arrest those who illegally sell guns, and new training for Bronx officers on what types of knives they can seize, Mr. McCarthy said. It focused on the 46th Precinct in University Heights, the 47th Precinct in Eastchester, the 44th in the South Bronx and the 52nd in Bedford Park, and has "flatlined" the murder rate in the Bronx, where there has not been a single killing since it began, he said. Although 61 percent of the people slain citywide since January were killed with guns, 22 percent were killed with knives, and the law covering what kind of knives can be confiscated is complex, Mr. McCarthy said. The Bronx initiatives are also focusing on marijuana, which Mr. McCarthy said had become an increasingly violent trade. In conjunction with the office of Robert T. Johnson, the Bronx district attorney, the police are handling marijuana arrests differently, arresting suspects and putting them through the courts, rather than issuing appearance tickets. Since March 17, in the four Bronx precincts, officers have made 908 marijuana arrests, compared with 193 from March 17 to April 4 last year. The police in the Bronx are also working with parole officers, tracking down violent repeat offenders in an effort to put them behind bars. Operation Condor was put in place by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in an effort to bring down the climbing murder rate. Based on the theory that an all-out assault on low-level drug crimes would cut drug-related murders, the program has put undercover narcotics detectives in the street on their days off and has led to more than 21,000 arrests. The officers get overtime pay for their work. And for the first three months of this year, statistics show that the department has been more aggressive in enforcing quality-of-life laws, issuing 12.2 percent more criminal summonses: 92,254 this year, as opposed to 82,240 in the first three months of last year. Mr. McCarthy acknowledged that the quality-of-life crackdown has not been effective in reducing certain types of homicides, particularly those that occur indoors between people who know each other. He also dismissed the statements of other police officials that criticism of the police and media reports about the Abner Louima assault and the shooting of Amadou Diallo have made officers reluctant to seize guns and make other arrests. "The numbers don't support that, because we still have an increase in arrests and activity, which shows that the cops are still doing their jobs in spite of the criticism," he said. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea