Crime ticked back upward, albeit slightly, across New York City during January 2023 after ending 2022 with a December decline in major felonies, the NYPD reported on Friday evening.
January saw a 4.1% increase in the seven major crime categories (murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, grand larceny, burglary, auto theft) from a year prior, with 10,067 crimes reported during the period. Shootings and murders, however, were still down for the period, which the NYPD credits to an “enhanced public safety investment across each borough, in every neighborhood.”
Shootings plunged in January 2023 by 26.3, from 99 incidents reported at the same time in 2022 to 73 this year. Accordingly, the number of shooting victims also fell by 21.8%, from 110 to 86. The NYPD said the reductions are a result of efforts to drive down gun activity in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.
The murder decline was more slight — a 3.2% drop, with one less homicide reported in January 2023 (30) than in 2022 (31).
January 2023, however, denied the NYPD three straight months of reported crime declines. After 10 months of increases, November 2022 was the first month that the department catalogued a drop in crime (1.3%), and followed up with an even better December, during which major felonies decreased by 11.6%.
Fueling the increase, police said, was a spike in felony assaults, which jumped 14.9%, from 1,790 such incidents in January 2022 to 2,056 last month. No other crime category had a double-digit percentage increase.
The total number of major crimes reported in January (10,067) was slightly lower than the December 2022 total (10,164).
Overall, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell seemed encouraged that the NYPD continues to make great strides in turning back the tide against crime after many months of increases in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic’s peak.
“As we step forward through 2023 and beyond, the women and men of the New York City Police Department are continuing to effectively and efficiently suppress violence, address the drivers of crime, and safeguard our streets and our subways,” said Sewell in a statement. “More work, however, is required when it comes to certain categories of crime, and we are determined in our efforts to reverse these trends. Everyone who lives, works, and visits our great city deserves to be safe, and the members of the NYPD will tolerate nothing less.
January 2023 crime report highlights
- Arrests for overall index crimes reached a 24-year high in January — up 29.6 from January 2022 alone, with 4,420 collars reported last month. The city hasn’t seen such high arrests numbers since 1999, according to the NYPD.
- Transit crimes plunged 29.3%, which the NYPD said is the result of the NYPD’s surge in police officers in the subway system. The biggest reductions were in transit-related grand larcenies (down 44.3%, from 97 to 54) and robberies (down 20.7%, from 58 to 46).
- Hate crimes were flat, with 35 incidents reported in January, the same number from the same month in 2022.
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