Murder Rate 10% Ahead of '05 Rate

The city's murder rate is running 10% ahead of the 2005 rate, the chief spokesman for the Police Department, Paul Browne, told The New York Sun.

There have been 64 reported murders in the city through Sunday, Mr. Browne said, compared with 58 at the same point last year. This increase, he said, can be attributed to an unusual spate of six unrelated homicides in a 24-hour period during one weekend.

The Sun reported yesterday that Police Department data through Friday showed that homicides in the city were up by 20% so far this year. Although the year is young, the jump in the number of homicides appeared to be a departure from the record-low crime levels Mayor Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, have long touted.

A law and police science professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Eli Silverman, stressed the difficulty the Police Department faces in continuing to improve its crime statistics.

"The problem is they're fighting themselves, figuratively," Mr. Silverman said. "It's more and more difficult" to push the crime figures lower, he added.

On Sunday, Mr. Browne said of the murder rate: "We experienced a spike ... but spikes tend to flatten out. You can't predict a trend in an increase driven by six homicides in a 24-hour period."

There has been an uptick in major crime this year. Through Sunday, a total of 14,258 major crimes were reported, compared with 14,247 in 2005. Of the six other major categories of crime, rape, robbery, and grand larceny increased, while felony assault, burglary, and grand larceny auto decreased.