So far, there have been 414 homicides in the city, down 19% from 2011 and the fewest since reliable records began in 1963.

 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the number showed that "the safest big city in America is safer".

 

Meanwhile, Chicago has hit 500 murders for the year.

 

The US' third largest city has seen a wave of gang violence in the past year, including one weekend day on which six people died.

 

 

Mr Bloomberg and New York Police Commissioner¹ Raymond Kelly announced the numbers during a police academy graduation on Friday.

 

The 2012 murder rate was less than a fifth of the city's record of 2,245 homicides in 1990.

 

The drop in the murder rate is "a testament² to the hard work and determination of the men and women who put their lives on the line for us every day, "Mr Bloomberg said. "And it also reflects our commitment to doing everything possible to stop gun violence."

 

In a statement, Mr Kelly attributed the decline to the increasing use of stop-and-frisk, a controversial tactic³ where police can stop and search people on the street they consider suspicious. 

 

"We're preventing crimes before someone is killed and before someone else has to go to prison for murder or other serious crimes," he said.

 

Civil rights groups and some local politicians have criticised the practice, saying that most people stopped turn out to be innocent, and that it unfairly targets black and Latino men. 

 

Other crimes like rapes⁴, robberies, assaults and burglaries were up slightly in the city, while grand larceny⁵ went up by 9%, due to increased thefts of electronic devices.

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