A new large-scale national crime survey finds that New York City’s murder rate remains higher than it was before the pandemic in 2019, even as the national average has nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels and is even below them.
According to the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), the homicide rate is expected to increase by about 20% by the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2019. Newly released interim crime report found.
While the city’s homicide rate is down 20% compared to the same period in 2023, over the past three years the city has been unable to return to pre-pandemic homicide levels of about 1.5 homicide victims per 100,000 population.
“All I have left here are memories,” said Danette Holley, whose 37-year-old son, Najim Berry, was shot in the back of the head and killed in February at a Crown Heights liquor store after refusing to give a crazed man a free cigar.
The fact that it’s declining every year is little comforting, she said.
“I’m suffering right now,” Holly told The Post, “emotionally, mentally. For a parent to have their child murdered like this, massacred. His life taken for no reason.”
Murders across Gotham spiked during the unrestful summer of 2020 as the pandemic began, increasing 33% year-over-year from 2019 and spiking about 90% by the end of the summer, according to CCJ data.
The rate has decreased each year since then, but four years later it remains higher than pre-pandemic levels.
The murder rate remained high at 1.8 per 100,000 people in the first half of 2024. That’s just 0.3 more than before the pandemic, but in a city of more than 8.3 million people, that translates to roughly 25 more New Yorkers dying from homicide in the real world.
While New York’s murder rate remains high, many cities across the country have returned to or fallen below pre-pandemic levels, and the national murder rate is 2% lower than it was in the first half of 2019, according to the CCJ.
According to the CCJ study, the decline in the national murder rate was driven primarily by declines in large cities that traditionally have higher murder rates, with St. Louis seeing a 23% drop since 2019, Detroit a 7% drop, Philadelphia a 19% drop and Baltimore a whopping 40% drop.
Overall crime in New York City is trending downward, showing a 2.2% decrease so far in 2024, according to the latest data from the NYPD.
Gun violence decreased by 11.5%, equating to about 50 fewer gun violence victims.
“While we certainly expect one more shooting or murder, crime in New York City continues to trend in a clear and positive direction,” an NYPD spokesman told The Post.
But Holly said she felt things were heading in the wrong direction despite the numbers.
“[Crime] “It’s getting worse, and I’ll tell you why it’s getting worse: because we have people literally committing murder and not being punished,” Holly said.
