Big homicide drop in some major US cities

– New York, Chicago and Washington all had significant declines in homicides in 2017, though the murder rate rose in Baltimore, Maryland amid drug problems and racial tension.

And while its number of murders was down, Washington saw some particularly brutal killings, including a decapitation blamed on a gang.

The homicide decline was dramatic in New York, which had 2 245 killings as recently as 1990, but just 286 in 2017, according to the New York Times. That was down from 334 in 2016 and was the city’s lowest number of murders since the 1950s. Every major category of crime declined there, the Times reported. Violent crime in the city has declined for 27 years.

Chicago, which in 2016 had its deadliest year in two decades with 754 killings, saw its murder total drop last year to 650, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Homicides fell in Washington from 135 in 2016 to 116 in 2017. But there were some vicious killings of teens. One boy was shot in a robbery of his sneakers; a 17-year-old girl was fatally attacked as she walked to a mosque; and a teen in suburban Maryland was stabbed and decapitated by members of a gang.

Baltimore, where there were violent riots after the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in police custody, had 343 homicides last year, up from 318 killings the year before, the Baltimore Sun reported. –