Shootings and murders in the city decreased in June of this year compared to last, but crime as a whole increased, thanks to a large increase in thefts, according to NYPD crime statistics released Tuesday, July 6.
The city saw 33 murders in June 2021, a decrease of 23.3 percent compared to the 43 murders the city saw last June. And overall shootings decreased by 19.5 percent from last June, with 165 incidents recorded compared to 205 last year.
“We’ve got a lot more to do, but we see some real progress,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at his July 6 morning press briefing with Police Commissioner Dermot Shea.
Index crimes overall saw a 3 percent increase owing to a large rise in thefts — grand larcenies increased by 32.3 percent compared to last June, with auto thefts increasing 31.2 percent and robberies by 16 percent. Rapes were up 10 percent compared to last year, according to NYPD statistics.
The decrease in shootings and murders comes after a year which saw some of the highest numbers in recent memory. 2021 has seen a 12 percent increase in murders in the city compared to last year, with 212 so far compared to 189 at the same time last year. Shootings overall have increased this year by over 40 percent, with 718 incidents taking place so far in 2021 compared to 503 at the same point in 2020, per NYPD data.
2020 saw the highest number of murders in the city since 2011; 468 murders and “non-negligible” manslaughters took place in the city in 2020, compared to a 2017 low of 292. In turn, crime became one of the defining issues of the mayor’s race this year.
The department made 361 gun arrests in June, a nearly 100 percent increase over the same month last year as the cops attempt to stem gun violence and the flow of illegal guns into the five boroughs.
NYPD is also putting resources into policing alleged gangs; Shea posited at the Tuesday press briefing with the mayor that “roughly half” of the shootings in the city are gang-related. He said that NYPD had conducted seven large-scale “gang takedowns” in the last two months, taking 94 of the “worst of the worst” individuals off the street in relation to 43 “provable acts of violence.”
