The mayor of New York has said that fewer murders have been committed in the city in 2012 than at any time in the past 50 years.
Michael Bloomberg said there had been 414 homicides, 101 fewer than the previous year.
The city's police commissioner, Ray Kelly, said the decline was due to the routine searching of people suspected of illegally carrying weapons.
Last month New York recorded its first day in living memory without a single report of a violent crime, the BBC reports.