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.