With the last homicide recorded on New Year’s Eve, the New York Police Department counted 532 murders in 2010 — a 13 percent increase from 2009, when there were 471.

But, as police officials have often pointed out, the numbers can be misleading. The 2009 figure was the lowest number of murders since 1963, when the department began keeping reliable statistics. And even the total in 2010 was the fourth lowest, and the year was the the ninth consecutive that the total was below 600.

Major felony crime, the police said on Monday, was down 1.6 percent compared to the prior year, and down 35 percent compared to 2001.

Other categories with minor fluctuations included robbery, which was up 4.7 percent. Felony assaults crept up less than 1 percent. Meanwhile, burglary and grand larceny were each down 4.5 percent. Car thefts fell 3 percent.

The statistical breakdown of murders in 2010 offered some interesting insights:

92 percent of murder victims last year were black or Hispanic, as were the suspects in their killings.
90 percent of all suspects were male; 83 percent of the victims were male.
81 percent of the suspects had prior arrests, as did 72 percent of the victims.
Investigators determined that most victims and suspects knew each other.
More than half of the suspects — as well as their victims — were tied to the use or sale of narcotics.
62 percent of the victims were shot.
64 percent of the killings occurred outdoors.
95 were on a Saturday, and 41 of those were between 2 and 3 a.m.
The police note that older cases are sometimes reclassified as murders after new information becomes available or the death is not soon after the injury. There were 15 such instances in 2010, including the case of Howard Brevard.

In 1977, Mr. Brevard was beaten in the head with a machete wielded by Robert Jenkins, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department chief’s spokesman. Mr. Jenkins was arrested for assault and sent to prison, where he died in 1986.

Mr. Brevard spent much of his life in Coler Nursing Home, where he died in his sleep at age 69 on Aug. 9, 2009. In January 2010, the medical examiner conducted an autopsy and found that Mr. Brevard died of sepis, or infection, and ruled it murder by linking his condition to the original beating.

(Source: NY Times)