US murder rates down because of technology

UNITED STATES: Murder rates in America’s largest cities fell to historic lows last year as the police used technology to monitor gun violence and predict crime hotspots.

The figures jar with the Trump administration’s claims that America is enduring ‘‘ rising violent crime [and] a staggering increase in homicides’’.

In New York 290 murders were recorded last year, the lowest since comparable records began in 1951 and a near 90 per cent decrease from 1990, when a record 2262 people were killed. In Los Angeles there were 281 murders last year, compared with 1094 in 1992.

Both cities have used computer systems with algorithms that track and predict crime to deploy officers.

Officials say this technology has been combined with a new effort to engage in traditional community policing. James O’Neill, the New York police commissioner, said: ‘‘It’s our home and we’re willing to fight for it.’’

Chicago, which had been blighted by spiralling levels of violence in recent years, also recorded a decrease in murders: 650 were recorded last year, down from 771 in 2016. The city had became emblematic of chaotic gun violence after its murder rate soared by nearly 60 per cent in 2016. President Trump has frequently singled it out as symbolic of a broader law and order crisis.

Early last year Chicago began to introduce a system that combines gunfire detection technology, predictive crime software and an extensive network of cameras.

When a shot is fired the police can now be alerted within 30 seconds by an automated system called Shotspotter.

Police and criminologists from the University of Chicago analyse the data immediately. Officers now often respond to incidents several minutes before witnesses report gunfire to the 911 emergency number telephone number, officials said.

Official figures do not yet show whether last year marked a nationwide reversal of two years of increases in murders in 2015 and 2016. Preliminary analysis of police figures suggested, however, that the numbers of murders probably dipped last year.

Across the US, pockets of extreme violence still remain. Philadelphia, San Francisco and Columbus recorded increased murders in 2017.

Experts said the violence in the worst-affected cities, such as Baltimore, is concentrated in small networks of high-risk people.

David Kennedy, a criminologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said: ‘‘Under one half of 1 per cent of the city ... they’ll be connected to 60 per cent or 70 per cent of all the homicides.’’