With the stunning drop in the city's homicides, New York magazine speculates on what it would take to take homicides to zero. Improssible? Probably. But here's the proposal:

>> Keep on keeping on. Now that the low hanging fruit has been picked, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, with the help of CompStat, is doubling manpower on about 20 small hot spots where crime remains stubbornly high. Instead of spreading rookies across the boroughs, he is focusing them in these particularly tough areas.

>> Decriminalize drugs. Fewer than 100 of last year's 494 homicides involved perpetrators who were strangers to their victims. The remaining killers can be broken broadly into two categories: crimes of passion and those acting with economic or social incentives. And the most obvious source of the latter is the illegal drug trade.

>> Play marriage cop. NY cops made 76,000 home visits last year where domestic violence had occurred. Only 45 domestic violence homicides were recorded last year. Home visits let abusers know that someone is watching and victims know that there is someone they can turn to. Home visits can also remove offenders who have moved back in without court appproval.

>> Get inside the would-be killer's head with cameras and even brain imaging.

>> Gentrify the entire city and make everyone a homeowner. This is offered partially tongue in cheek, but it is based on this fact: 90% of the city's homicide victims last year were black or Hispanic, up from 86% in 2004. In other words, once whites/people of higher incomes/homeowners -- take your pick because too often in America, they still mean the same thing -- crime goes down. "It's too simple to say that the city has succeeded merely in displacing crime, driving it outside the boroughs' boundaries or corralling it into a few unlucky NY neighborhoods," the magazine reported, since high crime neighborhoods are still safer than they were in 1990 and they have more police coverage.

Robin, January 21, 2008

This last statement is a stretch. If anything, NYC is proof that high density rentals does not automatically mean high crime.

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