There are other reasons to take the drop in murders with a grain of salt. Perhaps the biggest: The number of non-lethal shootings was on pace to jump up by about 3% in 2019 as of mid-December, when a cyber attack on the city’s computer systems complicated access to reliable crime numbers.
Why there were substantially more killings in 2018 than in 2019 — despite a similar level of gun violence — is something experts can’t readily explain. Historically, Asher has argued that the number of shooting incidents may be a better barometer of violence than murders — in part because there are more of them, and whether a shooting becomes a homicide can depend on medical care, luck and other variables.