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New York City Homicide Map
Original article
June 19, 2009
[h1]In New York, Number of Killings Rises With Heat[/h1]
By ANDREW W. LEHREN and AL BAKER
A young boxer was shot dead outside a Bronx bodega at 3:30 a.m. on a Saturday last August. Weeks later, a 59-year-old woman was beaten to death on aSaturday night on the side of a Queens highway. On the last Sunday in September, violence exploded as five men were killed in a spate of shootings andstabbings between midnight and 6 a.m.
Seven homicides in New York City. None connected in any way but this: They happened during the summer months, when the temperatures rise, people hit thestreets, and New York becomes a more lethal place.
There were more homicides in September than in any other month last year: 52. Next highest was August, with 51. Variations, of course, exist. There were 48homicides last March, for instance.
Still, the prime time for murder is clear: summertime. Indeed, it is close to a constant, one hammered home painfully from June to September across thedecades. And the breakdown of deadly brutality can get even more specific. September Saturdays around 10 p.m. were the most likely moments for a murder in thecity.
The summer spike in killings is just one of several findings unearthed in an analysis by The New York Times of multiyear homicide trends. The information -detailing homicides during the years 2003 to 2008 - was compiled mainly from open-records requests with the New York Police Department, and a searchabledatabase of details on homicides in the city during those years is available online for readers to explore at nytimes.com/nyregion.
Of course, the dominant and most important trend involving murder in New York has been the enormous decline in killings over the last 15 years, to levelsnot seen since the early 1960s.
Still, hundreds of people are killed every year in the city, and The Times's findings provide insights about who is killed in New York, as well as whodoes the killing, where murders occur and why.
Women, for instance, are less likely to be either victims or killers. Those who were killed - at least 73 women were in 2008 - were almost always murderedby someone they knew - boyfriends, husbands or relatives. From 2003 to 2008, the number of women killed each year by strangers was in the single digits -excluding cases in which the police do not know if the killer knew the victim. Last year, as few as eight women died at the hands of strangers.
Brooklyn - as it has since at least 2003 - led all boroughs in the number of homicides last year, with 213. Last year, the 73rd Precinct, which includes theneighborhoods of Ocean Hill and Brownsville, had the largest death toll, 31. The bloodiest block in Brooklyn was in the 77th Precinct, in Crown Heights,bounded by Schenectady Avenue, Sterling Place, Troy Avenue and St. Johns Place. But the borough with the most homicides per capita was the Bronx.
More often than not, the weapon of choice is a firearm. Each year the percentage of people killed by firearms hovers around 60 percent. Though slightly lessthan in recent years, at least 56 percent of last year's homicides were committed with these weapons.
Of all the trends to emerge, the time for killing was among the most enduring.
In New York, the trend goes back well before the years covered in the database - at least as far as 1981, according to an analysis of reports by the citymedical examiner's office done by Steven F. Messner, a criminology professor at the State University of New York at Albany. And he believes it stretches back much further thanthat.
Nationally, in the early 1980s, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed a decade's worth of homicidedata across the nation, and found that while suicides peak in the spring, homicides swell between July and September.
A prime reason murder peaks during this time has to do with the routines of people's lives, according to Professor Messner.
"Homicides vary with social acting," he said. "It evolves from interactions."
Summer is when people get together. More specifically, casual drinkers and drug users are more likely to go to bars or parties on weekends and evenings, asopposed to a Tuesday morning. These people in the social mix, flooding the city's streets and neighborhood bars, feed the peak times for murder, expertssay.
And the trend occurs in other cities, in places like Chicago, Boston and Newark, according to criminologists.
Some of the same trends are on display around Christmastime and are believed to be behind the slight increases in murder that occur then, criminologistssay.
Thomas D. Nerney, who retired in 2002 as a detective in the New York Police Department's Major Case Squad, said the patterns were well known within thedepartment.
Assigned as a detective in Brooklyn from 1972 to 1986, he said that on a hot summer night or in the holiday season, a similar set of factors seemed to bebehind the killings: a chance to socialize and to drink or use drugs.
He recalled the late 1970s and early '80s in Brooklyn, when the heavier homicide caseloads seemed to come as neighborhoods got hotter.
"We had so many of them," Mr. Nerney said. "They would be on rooftops. There might be somebody who lured someone somewhere; you would have asex-related killing or a revenge killing. Rooftops or backyards."
The Times analysis, when compared with Professor Messner's findings from 1981, shows that increasingly, more victims were killed between midnight and 8a.m. in recent years than in the past.
According to the professor's study of homicides in Manhattan, 29 percent of the 1,826 victims in 1981 were killed between midnight and 8 a.m. Morerecently, from 2006 through 2008, 39 percent of all homicide victims were killed during those hours, the Times analysis shows.
Also, as the number of homicides has shrunk, the data shows that more are occurring on weekends. From 2003 to 2008, 36 percent of all victims were killed onSaturday or Sunday, the analysis shows.
Failing to understand the basic connection between time of year and homicide rates can lead law enforcement agencies to faulty conclusions about what ishappening in the streets - and it can affect their strategies.
In St. Louis, a 1990s-era gun buyback program begun each fall was thought by some to be behind a drop in violence. But as Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, studied the program's impact, he found that the annual crime reductionswere more attributable to the normal seasonal ebbing in homicide and assaults.
In New York, Vincent Henry, a retired police sergeant who now teaches criminology and who has studied the department's Compstat program, in whichcomputerized data is used for more efficient policing, said that time was one of many factors in making decisions about staffing and when and how to deployofficers.
But that was not always the case.
In the early 1990s, police managers altered the working hours for various groups of detectives, including those tracking narcotics cases and those seekingto arrest criminals wanted on open warrants.
It seemed to the top officials at the time that too many officers were keeping bankers' hours - ending their shifts at dusk and taking weekends off -and not working closely enough with counterparts.
Jack Maple, a former police deputy commissioner who helped develop Compstat, wrote a book, "The Crime Fighter," in which he detailed the issues ofthe day. He described the shortfall this way: "Unfortunately, the bad guys work around the clock."
And in the summer months, the bad guys tend tobe deadliest.
Original article
June 19, 2009
[h1]In New York, Number of Killings Rises With Heat[/h1]
By ANDREW W. LEHREN and AL BAKER
A young boxer was shot dead outside a Bronx bodega at 3:30 a.m. on a Saturday last August. Weeks later, a 59-year-old woman was beaten to death on aSaturday night on the side of a Queens highway. On the last Sunday in September, violence exploded as five men were killed in a spate of shootings andstabbings between midnight and 6 a.m.
Seven homicides in New York City. None connected in any way but this: They happened during the summer months, when the temperatures rise, people hit thestreets, and New York becomes a more lethal place.
There were more homicides in September than in any other month last year: 52. Next highest was August, with 51. Variations, of course, exist. There were 48homicides last March, for instance.
Still, the prime time for murder is clear: summertime. Indeed, it is close to a constant, one hammered home painfully from June to September across thedecades. And the breakdown of deadly brutality can get even more specific. September Saturdays around 10 p.m. were the most likely moments for a murder in thecity.
The summer spike in killings is just one of several findings unearthed in an analysis by The New York Times of multiyear homicide trends. The information -detailing homicides during the years 2003 to 2008 - was compiled mainly from open-records requests with the New York Police Department, and a searchabledatabase of details on homicides in the city during those years is available online for readers to explore at nytimes.com/nyregion.
Of course, the dominant and most important trend involving murder in New York has been the enormous decline in killings over the last 15 years, to levelsnot seen since the early 1960s.
Still, hundreds of people are killed every year in the city, and The Times's findings provide insights about who is killed in New York, as well as whodoes the killing, where murders occur and why.
Women, for instance, are less likely to be either victims or killers. Those who were killed - at least 73 women were in 2008 - were almost always murderedby someone they knew - boyfriends, husbands or relatives. From 2003 to 2008, the number of women killed each year by strangers was in the single digits -excluding cases in which the police do not know if the killer knew the victim. Last year, as few as eight women died at the hands of strangers.
Brooklyn - as it has since at least 2003 - led all boroughs in the number of homicides last year, with 213. Last year, the 73rd Precinct, which includes theneighborhoods of Ocean Hill and Brownsville, had the largest death toll, 31. The bloodiest block in Brooklyn was in the 77th Precinct, in Crown Heights,bounded by Schenectady Avenue, Sterling Place, Troy Avenue and St. Johns Place. But the borough with the most homicides per capita was the Bronx.
More often than not, the weapon of choice is a firearm. Each year the percentage of people killed by firearms hovers around 60 percent. Though slightly lessthan in recent years, at least 56 percent of last year's homicides were committed with these weapons.
Of all the trends to emerge, the time for killing was among the most enduring.
In New York, the trend goes back well before the years covered in the database - at least as far as 1981, according to an analysis of reports by the citymedical examiner's office done by Steven F. Messner, a criminology professor at the State University of New York at Albany. And he believes it stretches back much further thanthat.
Nationally, in the early 1980s, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed a decade's worth of homicidedata across the nation, and found that while suicides peak in the spring, homicides swell between July and September.
A prime reason murder peaks during this time has to do with the routines of people's lives, according to Professor Messner.
"Homicides vary with social acting," he said. "It evolves from interactions."
Summer is when people get together. More specifically, casual drinkers and drug users are more likely to go to bars or parties on weekends and evenings, asopposed to a Tuesday morning. These people in the social mix, flooding the city's streets and neighborhood bars, feed the peak times for murder, expertssay.
And the trend occurs in other cities, in places like Chicago, Boston and Newark, according to criminologists.
Some of the same trends are on display around Christmastime and are believed to be behind the slight increases in murder that occur then, criminologistssay.
Thomas D. Nerney, who retired in 2002 as a detective in the New York Police Department's Major Case Squad, said the patterns were well known within thedepartment.
Assigned as a detective in Brooklyn from 1972 to 1986, he said that on a hot summer night or in the holiday season, a similar set of factors seemed to bebehind the killings: a chance to socialize and to drink or use drugs.
He recalled the late 1970s and early '80s in Brooklyn, when the heavier homicide caseloads seemed to come as neighborhoods got hotter.
"We had so many of them," Mr. Nerney said. "They would be on rooftops. There might be somebody who lured someone somewhere; you would have asex-related killing or a revenge killing. Rooftops or backyards."
The Times analysis, when compared with Professor Messner's findings from 1981, shows that increasingly, more victims were killed between midnight and 8a.m. in recent years than in the past.
According to the professor's study of homicides in Manhattan, 29 percent of the 1,826 victims in 1981 were killed between midnight and 8 a.m. Morerecently, from 2006 through 2008, 39 percent of all homicide victims were killed during those hours, the Times analysis shows.
Also, as the number of homicides has shrunk, the data shows that more are occurring on weekends. From 2003 to 2008, 36 percent of all victims were killed onSaturday or Sunday, the analysis shows.
Failing to understand the basic connection between time of year and homicide rates can lead law enforcement agencies to faulty conclusions about what ishappening in the streets - and it can affect their strategies.
In St. Louis, a 1990s-era gun buyback program begun each fall was thought by some to be behind a drop in violence. But as Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, studied the program's impact, he found that the annual crime reductionswere more attributable to the normal seasonal ebbing in homicide and assaults.
In New York, Vincent Henry, a retired police sergeant who now teaches criminology and who has studied the department's Compstat program, in whichcomputerized data is used for more efficient policing, said that time was one of many factors in making decisions about staffing and when and how to deployofficers.
But that was not always the case.
In the early 1990s, police managers altered the working hours for various groups of detectives, including those tracking narcotics cases and those seekingto arrest criminals wanted on open warrants.
It seemed to the top officials at the time that too many officers were keeping bankers' hours - ending their shifts at dusk and taking weekends off -and not working closely enough with counterparts.
Jack Maple, a former police deputy commissioner who helped develop Compstat, wrote a book, "The Crime Fighter," in which he detailed the issues ofthe day. He described the shortfall this way: "Unfortunately, the bad guys work around the clock."
And in the summer months, the bad guys tend tobe deadliest.
