Crime rates in New York City keep dropping like autumn leaves despite having fewer police officers on the streets. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) will shrink to little over 34,000 officers within a year, compared to 41,000 officers a decade ago. The crime rate fell from 10,000 crimes per 100,000 people in the late eighties to 2,000 crimes per 100,000 people last year. Murders, which hit 200 on July 1, are heading toward a fresh low.  In 1990 the murder rate reached its peak at more than 2,200 murders a year. If New York City were to end this year with 400 murders or less, its murder rate will be quite comparable to that of Amsterdam (which hit 35 in 2005) and Rotterdam. Much will depend on the weather, it seems. According to a recent New York Times article, the number of killings in the City rises with the heat. And there are fewer homicides on a rainy day as well.

The ever-dropping New York murder/crime rate is remarkable in a number of ways:

1. New York City has fewer police officers than Amsterdam (34,000 police officers for a population of 9,000,000 compared to 6,000 police officers for a population of 900,000);

2. One would expect an exponential rather than a linear relationship between murder rate and a city’s population size; 

3. New York City is bound by the constitutional right to keep and bear arms despite every New York City mayor opposing it (including Rudi Giuliani, before he ran for president).

If the murder rate hits a record low this year, we may have to thank the crappy weather for it. Last month was the coldest and wettest June on record.