KILLINGS INCREASE IN MANY BIG CITIES

Homicides have increased sharply this year in many large cities, a
development that troubles law enforcement officials and experts who fear it
may signal a return to rising crime rates after a large decline in the 1990's.

The rise in homicides was led by Boston and Phoenix, which had increases of
more than 60 percent through Dec. 18, compared with the same period last
year, according to police figures in a survey of 18 major cities.

Homicides jumped 22 percent in St. Louis, 17.5 percent in Houston, 15
percent in San Antonio, 11.6 percent in Atlanta, 9.2 percent in Los Angeles
and 5.2 percent in Chicago, the police departments in those cities said.

However, even the sharp increases this year leave the big cities far below
the peak in homicide in 1991. The rise in Chicago, which has had 644
homicides this year, compared with 612 in the same period last year, means
that it will probably pass New York for the first time as the city with the
most homicides, though Chicago has 2.9 million people and New York has 8
million.

New York is an exception to the big cities with rising homicides, with 617
through Dec. 16, compared with 651 in the same period last year -- a drop
of 5.2 percent.

Several other cities also had small decreases, including Washington, with a
decline of 6 percent. But in most cities with fewer homicides, the decrease
was so slight that experts said it was not statistically significant.

Homicide has long been considered the bellwether crime, the one that most
worries the public and therefore the one that police chiefs watch most
carefully.

A jump in homicides in the big cities led the crime wave of the late
1980's, and a homicide decrease in the big cities started an eight-year
decline in overall crime beginning in 1992.

Charles H. Ramsey, Washington's police chief, pointed to two possible
explanations for the increases this year: the downturn in the economy and
an increase in family killings after years of declines driven by greater
attention to domestic violence.

The economy is the best indicator of whether crime will continue to
increase, Chief Ramsey said.

"More pink slips mean more crimes," he said. "It doesn't take long before
you start seeing that impact at street level."

Chief Ramsey said he was especially concerned about the impact that a
prolonged recession would have on poorer neighborhoods and low-income
workers. "It reaches everyone; it just reaches them first," he said. "If
this becomes long term, believe me, you will see the difference."

Another factor in the increase in homicides, police officials said, is the
rising number of prison inmates being released, the flip side of the prison
building boom of the last two decades. The number of inmates released from
state and federal prisons is projected to reach 635,000 this year, up from
474,300 in 1995, Alan Beck of the Bureau of Justice Statistics said.

Newly released prisoners are a particular problem in Los Angeles, because
California, with the biggest prison system, accounts for one in five of all
released inmates, the majority of whom return to Los Angeles.

"Prison is basically a place to learn crime," Sgt. John Pasquarello of the
Los Angeles Police Department said, "so when these guys come out, we see
many of them getting back into drug operations, and this leads to fights
and killings."

James Alan Fox, the Lipman family professor of criminal justice at
Northeastern University, pointed to another likely cause -- the cyclical
nature of crime. "To some extent, these cities were victims of their own
success," Professor Fox said. "The levels of homicides that some of these
cities had at the turn of the millennium were unusually low and unlikely to
be sustained."

In addition, the number of teenagers, the age group most prone to crime, is
growing by 1 percent a year after years of shrinking. But the homicides now
do not seem as connected to the combination of young people with drugs,
gangs and guns as they were in the crime wave of the late 1980's, police
executives in several cities said.

In Boston, for example, the city with the largest percentage increase this
year, 67 percent, the average age of those arrested on homicide charges is
25 and the average age of the victims is 30, far higher than average ages a
decade ago in the crack cocaine epidemic.

"I don't think there is any one particular reason for the jump in
homicides," said Paul Farrahar, Boston's deputy police commissioner in
charge of homicides. "Where we know the motivation for the killings, they
have been kind of across the board this year. I wish there was one single
motive we could see, so we could address it and go back to a lower figure."

But, Mr. Farrahar said, the most surprising increase in Boston this year
has been killings involving family members.

Another possible factor in the increase this year, officials said, is the
impact of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as the police in many cities were
diverted to other duties like guarding bridges and water supplies, and
people suffering from depression may have turned to alcohol or drugs to
medicate themselves.

But of the 16 cities surveyed, only New York, Baltimore and Washington
reported a jump in crime after Sept. 11. Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist
at Carnegie Mellon University, said most of the increase in homicides, in
those cities with upturns, occurred in the first half of the year.

In New York, crime dropped sharply after Sept. 11, followed in October and
November by a surge in violence, as many police officers were deployed to
other duties, Bernard B. Kerik, the police commissioner, said.

After he spotted the sudden rise, Mr. Kerik said, he ordered several of his
special units back to their crime-fighting jobs, including narcotics
detectives, the gang intelligence unit and the warrant squad that tracks
down parolees who commit offenses. As a result, shootings and homicides
dropped last week to levels below what they were in the same period last year.

Professors Fox and Blumstein said Mr. Kerik deserved credit for introducing
policies to help bring New York's crimes down again this year, about 12
percent over all, in the face of the upturn elsewhere, showing that it
could be done through innovation and good management.

In Washington, Chief Ramsey said the 6 percent drop in homicides for the
year would have been larger if not for the Sept. 11 attacks. "We were doing
much better than that before Sept. 11," he said, "but we've had a spike
since then and we're trying to figure out if that's related."

"I don't know if anxiety has anything to do with it or whether there's the
impression out there that the police are busy doing other things," he said.
But Washington has had a marked increase in domestic killings and others
traceable to "plain old arguments."

"That motive category is always significant, but it seems like, from Sept.
11 on, the majority seems to be that," Chief Ramsey said. "I don't know if
people have shorter fuses or what; it's just too early to tell."

In one city, San Diego, the events of Sept. 11 may have led to a sharp drop
in homicides. Before the terrorist attacks, the police were projecting that
San Diego would have 70 homicides this year, a 40 percent increase from the
50 homicides the city had in 2000. But since Sept. 11, there have been only
5 killings, and San Diego is now likely to have no increase for the year,
Lt. Jim Duncan of the homicide division said. Because San Diego is a
military town, with large Navy and Marine bases, Lieutenant Duncan said,
people have been focused on the war and their family members overseas, and
this has helped reduce crime.