Murders have dropped by 52 percent in New Haven so far this year, with a noticeable drop in shootings, too.
That’s according to the latest year-to-date statistics released by the police department.
The city has had 11 murders so far this year, as opposed to 23 at the same point last year.
In addition, 60 shootings had been reported between Jan. 1 and Aug. 25, 2012. That represented a 30 percent drop from the same period in 2011, which saw 86 shootings.
Total gunshots year-to-date gunshots reported dropped 27.3 percent, from 286 to 208. Motor vehicle theft dropped 19.7 percent, thefts from autos, 13.1 percent.
Reported rapes rose from 24 to 33 over that period; robberies with firearms from 168 to 181.
While it’s early to draw long-term conclusions from the statistics, a range of explanations has been offered for the violent crime drop — from the reinstitution of community policing, to the creation of a shootings task force, to increased cooperation among law enforcement agencies, to a wave of arrests in homicide cases from last year and earlier this year.
A drop this year is a good thing, but I recall that last year's number was incredibly high, so this is really just regression to the mean, not something that needs to be explained (and certainly not a "holiday").
I think articles about the murder rate (and other statistical measures), to be meaningful, should be accompanied by more background information. For example, I would like to see a graph of the New Haven murder rate over the last 20 years.