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 NEW YORK (AP) - After many years of decline, the number of murders climbed this year in New York and many other major U.S. cities, reaching their highest levels in a decade in some places. Among the reasons given: gangs, drugs, the easy availability of illegal guns, a disturbing tendency among young people to pull guns when they do not get the respect they demand, and, in Houston at least, an influx of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
In New York, where the city reported 579 homicides through Dec. 24 — a nearly 10 percent increase from the year before — the spike is mostly the result of an unusually large number of "reclassified homicides," or those involving victims who were shot or stabbed years ago but did not die until this year. Thirty-five such deaths have been added to this year's toll, compared with an annual average of about a dozen.
At the same time, Police Department spokesman Paul Browne noted that this year's total is only slightly higher than last year's 539 homicides — the city's lowest death toll in more than 40 years.
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