New York celebrates first shooting-free weekend in 25 years

New York City has marked a weekend without any shootings for the first time in a quarter of a century, police have confirmed.

From Friday 12 October to Sunday 14 October, there were no shootings reported throughout any of the city’s five boroughs.

NYPD chief of patrol Rodney Harrison announced the milestone in a tweet on Monday.

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City Mayor Bill de Blasio credited the “extraordinary” breakthrough to the efforts of the New York Police Department (NYPD), during a speech at a graduation ceremony for newly sworn-in officers, CNN reports.

“A city of 8.6 million people - not a single shooting for three days. Let’s thank the NYPD for what they’ve achieved,” he said.

New York City last went a whole weekend without any shootings in 1993, according to police records.

This weekend’s milestone came just days after the NYPD’s chief of crime-control strategies, Lori Pollock, announced that the city looked set to achieve “another record-setting year” of fewer than 97,000 crimes.

“The city has now seen decreases in shootings in eight consecutive quarters,” Pollock said. “We had a historically low number of shootings in September.”

The overall murder rate in New York has been in steady decline since a high of 2,245 was recorded in 1990 - prompting a major crackdown on violent crimes that spanned the mayoral tenures of David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.

Last year saw the lowest murder rate recorded in the city since 1951, at just 292, although The Wall Street Journal reports that 2018’s final total looks set to be higher.