CRIME ON SLIDE

O’Neill: Murders, shootings down; only rape is up

Police Commissioner James O’Neill is hoping to celebrate the new year in a big way — ending 2018 without New York City seeing a spike in murders or shootings from the previous year.

With roughly two weeks to go before the ball falls in Times Square, the city is poised to end the year like it did in 2017 — with the lowest number of homicides in nearly seven decades.

“I’ve become very superstitious in this job, I’m knocking on wood over here,” O’Neill said during an interview with radio host Joe Piscopo on 970 AM The Answer. “But it looks like we will be even in homicides (from 2017), which is a tremendous achievement.”

The city’s top cop also said that the number of shootings across the five boroughs will be down “a bit” and “overall crime will be down by one and a half percent.”

The NYPD recorded 292 homicides last year — the lowest tally since 1951, roughly six years before O’Neill (above) was born.

Through Sunday, NYPD detectives had investigated 273 homicides — three more than this time last year.

The department also logged 718 shootings, 21 fewer than the 739 reported this time last year.

Besides murders, the only other major crime category that increased was rapes, which saw a nearly 23% jump to 1,694 from 1,382 last year, according to NYPD statistics.

If everything works out, the city will end 2018 with 1,600 fewer crimes, O’Neill said.

“We’re heading in the right direction.”