Suffolk sees dip in homicide cases

Suffolk police are under a global spotlight as they hunt for a serial killer, but there is remarkable good news elsewhere on the crime front: The department reported no new homicides occurred in the first 100 days of this year.

By comparison, in the first three months of each year since 2002, the department reported an average of more than six homicides. In the first three months of 2010, there were 13.

That's not all. Other kinds of serious crime are also down in Suffolk in 2011.

"Tireless work by the men and women of the Suffolk County Police Department, including the gun/gang suppression team, the detective special operations team, and the heroin task force has continued to make Suffolk County one of the safest counties in the country," said Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer.

Suffolk police don't believe the four human remains found on the barrier beaches on March 29 and April 4 were killed this year. Ultimately, those deaths could be labeled homicides and included in the department's 2011 tally.

Richard Rosenfeld, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who specializes in crime statistics, said homicide rates tend to fluctuate but the drop in Suffolk is "pretty remarkable."

Rosenfeld said police out in the community investigating the serial killings and greater public awareness about crime may be serving as a deterrent to those whose unlawful acts include homicide. If so, Rosenfeld said you would expect to see a dip in all serious crimes, not just homicides alone.

And in fact, crime of all kinds is down sharply in Suffolk at the start of 2011. In January and February, the only months for which numbers were available from the state, the county logged 3,221 murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, larcenies and motor vehicle thefts.

The average for the first two months of each year from 2002 to 2010 was a total of 4,014 such crimes.

Dormer, with access to numbers not yet available from the state, said violent crimes alone are down nearly 23 percent in the first three months of this year compared with 2010.

Charles Wellford, a criminology professor at the University of Maryland who specializes in the study of homicide, said Suffolk may be benefiting from a nationwide dip in the number of murders linked to domestic violence.

While acknowledging that the absence of fresh homicides this year is a benefit to investigators on the serial killer case, Wellford warned the homicide hiatus, which reached the 100-day mark for the year on Sunday, won't last.

"I would bet you are going to catch up as the year goes on," he said. "The world just doesn't change that fast to see a huge, dramatic decrease in one year. That would be very abnormal."