Homicides and shootings have dropped dramatically in the first three months of the year, NYPD statistics show.

Eighty eight people were murdered in the city in the first three months of this year, a drop of nearly 21% over the same time period in 2010.

Shootings declined 14%, while overall crime was down 3.5%. Thirty one of the city’s 76 precincts reported no murders at all, with another 18 precincts logging only one each. The drop came after an alarming rise last year.

“The NYPD focuses its attention and resources relentlessly on shootings and homicide in general,” said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. “Hopefully, what now appears to be a record-setting trend for murder decline will continue into the next quarter.”

The 47th Precinct in the northeast Bronx was the bloodiest, logging five murders in 2011. The 75th Precinct in East New York continued to be the city’s most violent, with 682 felony complaints, but it dropped to 21st place for murders with only two.

There were 271 people shot across the city, compared to 315 for the same period last year.

While felony assaults were up by 5.5%, robbery, grand larceny and auto theft/break-in numbers were down by single digit percentages; burglaries declined 10.6%.

Andrew Karmen, a professor at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the early numbers suggest crime “is drifting down – slowly – as opposed to tumbling.”

The 90th Precinct in Williamsburg saw the biggest increase in crime – up 19.6%, fueled largely by ‘abductions’, robbery, assault and grand larceny auto complaints. There were no murders in the precinct, but shootings climbed to five from just one in the same period last year.

Jaime Estades, an immigration lawyer who’s lived in Williamsburg for 25 years, blamed the proliferation of nightclubs for breeding brawls, drugs and other problems. “People here wake up all the time in the middle of the night because there are fights outside them,” said Estades, 52.

(Source: NY Daily News)