The murder rate in New York City, which plunged in recent years to levels not seen since the 1960s, rose 12.4 percent in the first three months of this year, according to statistics released Tuesday. The murder rate in New York City, which plunged in recent years to levels not seen since the 1960s, rose 12.4 percent in the first three months of this year, according to statistics released Tuesday.
Overall violent crime, however, was down 7.5 percent.As of Sunday, there were 190 murders in the city this year, compared with 169 during the same period in 1999.The numbers were worst in the Bronx, where 61 people were killed this year, compared with 38 in the same period last year. Murders were down in Manhattan and up only slightly in the other boroughs.Garry McCarthy, who oversees the NYPD’s crime control strategies, disputed some published reports speculating that the shooting death of Amadou Diallo last year by four police officers had contributed to the murder increase. Diallo was shot 19 times as he stood unarmed in his Bronx apartment vestibule.It had been reported that some officers had been reluctant to make arrests for fear of being publicly criticised.”The enforcement numbers don’t bear that out,” McCarthy said.

“Arrests are up.”McCarthy said that last month more police were ordered to patrol the Bronx, and in the last two weeks, there have been three murders in the that borough – the same as last year.The drop in overall violent crime – which includes murders, rapes, robberies, burglaries, assaults, grand larcenies and auto thefts – mirrors a dramatic drop in violent crime since 1990, when murders were at an all-time high of 2,290.Criminal experts have attributed that decrease to the aging of baby boomers, a keener sense of community, pride in good citizenship and the decreasing use of crack cocaine.In 1998, the number of murders in New York City was down to 629, but it rose last year to 667.. Esperanza Tema had almost given up hope: her only daughter, whom she had never seen, had gone missing from the Guatemalan clinic where she was born six months ago. Esperanza Tema had almost given up hope: her only daughter, whom she had never seen, had gone missing from the Guatemalan clinic where she was born six months ago.
But Baby Esperanza turned up last weekend when police, investigating a gang that sells newborn infants to adoptive parents in France and Spain, raided four houses in Guatemala City and found a kidnapped baby in each. Prosecutors in Guatemala City are cracking down on the lucrative international baby trade, which accounts for 95 per cent of adoptions in this poor Central American country.Pressure to act grew after the release of a United Nations report last week which described how “baby farms” provide infants for Western couples willing to pay $25,000 (£15,600) for a healthy child.Ms Tema, nuzzling her daughter and blinking back tears, said she was made to sip a bitter liquid during labour. “They gave me a drink that must have been alcoholic.” It knocked her out for hours When she woke, her baby had gone.

She agreed to show police residences she had visited with Lucinda Bautiza, an educated woman accused of tricking her into signing away her power of attorney and they recovered her daughter.Another woman, Maria Lopez, was reunited with her stolen baby, Jose, on the same night. Ms Bautiza was taken in for questioning while search orders for the offices of two lawyers were prepared, though no arrests have been made.Meanwhile, thousands of genuine orphans languish in under-funded government homes until they are too old for any chance of life outside the institutions. It can take up to seven years to process papers for local adoptions without resorting to criminal short-cuts. Government figures confirmed that 1,332 Guatemalan babies were placed with foreigners in 1998. Lawyers, eager to earn 50 times the typical fee for a private adoption in Guatemala, tend to expedite the sale of babies abroad.Ofelia Calcetas-Santos, a UN childcare official who visited Guatemala City, said poor women were often “contracted” to produce babies and give them away. Pregnant prostitutes or indigent single mothers were frequently threatened or tricked into handing over their children, she said. If they changed their minds, like the mothers of Esperanza and Jose, their babies were stolen from them.Outraged that the collusion of attorneys and criminals reduced children to “commercial objects to be offered to the highest bidders”, Ms Calcetas-Santos urged Guatemala to pass long-delayed laws regulating adoption and to ensure private adoptions were eliminated.