Killings for 2019 at more than 300

New York City’s annual homicide total has surpassed 300 for the first time since 2016, fueled by pockets of gang violence, a pair of quadruple killings and an unusual number of bookkeeping adjustments.

Through Dec. 22, the city has tallied 311 homicides, compared with 290 at the same point last year.

It’s the second straight year of increases after the city achieved a modernera low of 292 homicides in 2017, but this year’s total is skewed in part by an outsized number of deaths carried over from years past.

At least 27 deaths in this year’s statistics happened prior to 2019 but weren’t classified as homicides by the city’s medical examiner until this year, the police department said. They must be counted in the statistics for the year the death certificate is issued.

There were half as many reclassifications counted in last year’s statistics.

Through the end of November, the city tallied 272 homicides involving people killed this year, Deputy Chief Lori Pollock said. At the same time last year, there were 275.

“We don’t like to talk about it because it’s fairly consistent through the years, but this one happens to be — it hasn’t happened since 2006 where you had this many classifications over the year before,” Pollock said.

New York finished last year with 295 homicides, down from 335 in 2016. The recent tallies are a far cry from the early 1990s, when the city averaged about 2,000 killings a year.

New York, the nation’s largest city, with about 8.6 million residents, has a homicide rate of about 3.6 per 100,000. That makes it statistically far less deadly than some other big cities.

Philadelphia, which has about 1.6 million residents, had 351 homicides as of Friday, for a rate of about 22 per 100,000. Chicago, which has about 2.7 million residents, has had 482 killings this year, for a rate of about 17.8 per 100,000.

Fluctuations in crime statistics are expected, criminologist David Kennedy said, and this year’s increase in New York’s homicide total shouldn’t be seen as evidence of a trend.

“Most of that change itself can be accounted for by a couple of standout incidents,” said Kennedy, a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College. “This is well within the absolutely expected fluctuation of what happens with

BEBETO MATTHEWS - ASSOCIATED PRESS In this Oct. 18 file photo, mourners gather at a funeral service for Chuen Kok at the Ng Fook Funeral Home in New York. Kok, an 83-year-old homeless man whom Chinatown residents warmly greeted as “uncle,” was one of four men bludgeoned to death in the community last week. New York City’s annual homicide total has eclipsed 300 for the first time since 2016, and other crime categories are also trending higher.