KELLY, COPS SHOULD TAKE BOW

Kelly, Cops Should Take Bow

As this newspaper went to press Dec. 28, it appeared that the city was going to conclude the year with fewer than 500 murders, the lowest number on record beginning in 1963, the furthest back that data is available.

Although this supports the claim by Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly that New York, based on FBI crime statistics, is the safest large city in America, it does not mean we have become Paradise on the Hudson. There are still more than a handful of neighborhoods in the city where the murder rate is high, even though it may have fallen dramatically from 15 or 20 years ago. Residents in those areas walk the streets - particularly after dark - with trepidation.

But bringing the murder rate below 500 would have been unimaginable during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it climbed above 2,000 spanning the tenures of two Mayors, before several factors including a major expansion of the police force and tougher and smarter enforcement began to turn the tide.

The decline began during the latter half of the Dinkins administration and accelerated dramatically under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. That it has continued under Mr. Bloomberg is remarkable for a couple of reasons.

One is that there is generally a point reached at which it's tough to continue improvements, but the NYPD has succeeded in this area even while other cities across the country have seen rises in their murder rates. The other is that the department currently is operating with 5,000 fewer officers than it had when Mr. Bloomberg took office in 2002, and 6,000 fewer than when the force peaked during Mr. Giuliani's next-to-last year on the job.

The reduction in officers - some of it by design, but nearly half of it the result of recruiting problems caused by a lamentably low starting salary - has been compounded by the need to divert many cops from anti-crime duties to terrorist-related activities.

The ability to keep serious crime falling despite those concerns is a tribute both to Mr. Kelly and his top command and the cops on the street who are effectively executing their policies. It is especially notable because it has been achieved without the polarizing atmosphere that characterized relations between the police and some minority communities during Mr. Giuliani's tenure. Even most critics of the cops would concede that those tensions have largely dissipated.

When he was running for Mayor in 2001, Mr. Bloomberg said he was counting on Mr. Kelly, who was then his adviser on criminal-justice issues, to persuade Bernard Kerik to stay on as Police Commissioner when Mr. Giuliani left office. We wonder how many times since then he has thanked the heavens that such efforts didn't bear fruit, sparing the Mayor major embarrassment and leaving him with a top-rank Police Commissioner who has made the most of his second go-round in the job.