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Shootings in New York Fall to Lowest Number Since the ’90s

Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill with Mayor Bill de Blasio at a news conference Wednesday. Officials said that shootings in 2016 fell to 998 from 1,138 the year before.Credit...Kevin Hagen for The New York Times

The photos briefly displayed by the New York Police Department at the Brooklyn Museum on Wednesday recalled when violent crime reached its peak in the city in the 1990s, when there were as many as 5,000 shootings and 2,000 murders in a year.

The police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, who grew up in East Flatbush in Brooklyn, said that at that time, “you couldn’t tell the color of the subway cars because they were covered in graffiti.”

“I remember that vividly,” he said. “And I can tell you firsthand that it was a very different city back then.”

Crime has gradually declined since then, and in 2016, for the first time in more than two decades, the city counted fewer than 1,100 shootings in a calendar year, a milestone that officials said on Wednesday was a result of the Police Department’s efforts to focus on serious crimes and mend relationships with the communities it serves.

At a news conference at the museum, the police announced that shootings had fallen to 998 in 2016 from 1,138 the year before. The 2016 total was the lowest since at least 1993, the year before the Police Department adopted a computerized system to track and combat crime. Murders also fell, to 335 last year from 352, after rising slightly in 2015. The record low, 333, was in 2014.

Over all, crime fell about 4.1 percent in the major categories tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to 101,606 in 2016 from 105,921 the year before. There were fewer murders, rapes, robberies, burglaries and grand larcenies in 2016, but felony assaults rose to 20,807, from 20,375 in 2015.

Crime has been falling in the city for two decades, and Mayor Bill de Blasio has praised the progress. At the news conference — held near his home neighborhood, Park Slope — he said the 2016 numbers presaged further reductions.

“We have right now the gateway to an even safer New York City,” Mr. de Blasio said in a speech that heaped praise on a Police Department he has frequently clashed with. Two years ago, officers turned their backs on Mr. de Blasio at the funerals of two officers who had been shot in their patrol car in Brooklyn.

Every mayor is judged on public safety, but crime was a particular vulnerability for Mr. de Blasio. In his 2013 campaign, he criticized the Police Department’s aggressive crime-control efforts, most notably the use of stop-and-frisk tactics in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

By the time he took office in 2014, a federal lawsuit had led to a sharp decline in stop-and-frisk practices. But crime — instead of rising, as some critics warned — has continued to fall. Crime is now a central talking point for Mr. de Blasio as he runs for re-election, and it is often the first subject mentioned by the mayor, his aides and his campaign staff when providing a summary of his first term.

The decline in shootings and murders in 2016 contrasted most notably with Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city after New York and Los Angeles. Chicago ended the year with 762 murders, the most in two decades, and more than 3,500 shootings. While other large cities, such as Baltimore and Los Angeles, have had fluctuations in violence in recent years, New York crime rates have largely declined.

The Brooklyn setting for the news conference was a departure from the usual police precinct or headquarters to discuss crime statistics, but it underscored the changes in the city, as well as the challenges that remain. Brooklyn, the city’s most populous borough, with 2.6 million residents, saw the second-highest reduction in shootings after the Bronx, where overall crime barely budged. However, the 75th Precinct in East New York in Brooklyn led the city with 23 murders, followed by four precincts, in Brooklyn and the Bronx, that had 14 murders apiece.

In a charismatic speech, Eric L. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, praised the anti-violence groups that have for years gone into some of the grittiest neighborhoods in the city, like Mr. Adams’s native Brownsville, to conduct outreach at candlelight vigils, on street corners, in hospitals and in public housing. But while crime in those communities has improved, gentrification in places like Crown Heights has made it difficult for longtime residents to stay to reap the benefits.

As they did all last year, officials on Wednesday credited the decline in shootings to the Police Department’s focus on the gangs and crews that it says are driving much of the violence. After restructuring its investigative units, the department carried out 107 targeted arrests that rounded up more than 1,000 suspected gang members, drug traffickers and their associates.

Many of the suspects were indicted before they were arrested, and they are receiving longer sentences when convicted, Commissioner O’Neill said.

“We’re picking them off one by one, or in many cases, dozens by dozens,” said Commissioner O’Neill, who succeeded William J. Bratton in the fall.

Under Commissioner O’Neill, the department has shifted its focus from chasing 9-1-1 calls to getting to know the communities it serves and addressing percolating problems.

“That combination of the right strategy, the right targeting and the right information is proving to be essential,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Officials did not say how many of those arrested during raids last year remained in prison. But as proof of their effectiveness, they pointed to the number of shootings tied to gangs: They dropped to 417 last year, from 565 in 2015. As of Dec. 28, gang-related killings fell to 79 in 2016, from 129 in 2015.

In continuing to drive down crime even as it has pulled back from heavy enforcement of low-level offenses and from aggressive tactics like stop-and-frisk, the Police Department has shown the value of focusing on stopping serious crime, said David M. Kennedy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“New York City, in many ways, convinced the rest of the country that things like zero tolerance were the way to make communities safe,” Professor Kennedy said. “And now it’s showing the country that you absolutely do not need to do that, you should not do it, and there are much, much better and less damaging ways to work with communities to produce public safety.”

Benjamin Mueller and J. David Goodman contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: Shootings in New York Fell in 2016 to Lowest Level in More Than 20 Years. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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