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Violent crime is down significantly since the early 90's. Chicago is an exception. You are seeing more media coverage because of the Internet and sensationalized jouranlism. From the Economist:
Murder rates
There will be less blood
In two of America’s biggest cities, fewer people are being killed
Dec 8th 2012 | NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON, DC | from the print edition
All dressed up and nowhere to go
NEW YORK CITY’S body count had been rising steadily when Brian Watkins, a tourist from Utah, was stabbed in the heart while defending his family from muggers in 1990. One of 2,262 murders in the city that year, his death seemed to embody New York’s status as the most violent place in America. But the city had competition, not least from Washington, DC, which was mired in a crack epidemic that consumed even its mayor. The District of Columbia, a fraction the size of New York, saw over 400 killings a year in the early 1990s. It became “the murder capital of America”.
That was then. Today New York is on course to end the year with around 400 killings, a level not seen since John Kennedy was in the White House. It was remarkable when, for 36 hours last month, no one at all was stabbed, shot or murdered in the city. The District, meanwhile, looks certain to have suffered fewer than 100 killings this year, the lowest number recorded for nearly half a century.
Although New York and Washington stand out, violent crime has been declining nationally for some 20 years. The trend is not uniform—Chicago and Detroit, for example, have seen their murder rates jump this year—but life in America is generally safer than it was two decades ago. Criminologists are wondering why.
Innovative police efforts, like CompStat, a crime-mapping system, and the “broken-windows” strategy, which focuses on restoring order to communities, were implemented in New York in the early 1990s, and crime rates began to fall. More recently department officials have been trying Operation Impact, a programme which floods troubled areas with police, mostly new recruits. Crime in these “hotspots” tends to drop at twice the citywide rate. The controversial stop-and-frisk policy, under which people suspected of criminal activity are stopped and checked for weapons, is also considered helpful. Ray Kelly, the police commissioner, claims that such proactive policing saved over 5,600 lives between 2002 and 2011.
Some of the tactics used in New York have made their way to the District, where Cathy Lanier, the police chief, credits her department’s crackdown on guns and gangs for the recent decline in violence. As with Mr Kelly, there has been some controversy along the way, for instance when she set up checkpoints around an especially gang-plagued neighbourhood, or proposed that police should go door-to-door in search of guns. Some see her efforts as more public-relations than policing, but it is hard to argue with the results.
And that is the problem. With success in fighting crime so widespread, most police departments can point to tactics that correlate with declining violence. But many were not in place when the declines began, so proving cause and effect is hard. This had led some to propose broader explanations for the safer streets, such as reduced exposure to lead, which can make people more violent; increasing gentrification; or a preference among young hoodlums for playing video games.
For their part, both New York and Washington continue to innovate, applying technology and forming partnerships with the business community. New York, for instance, has jointly developed a real-time tracking tool with Microsoft that it plans to sell to other police departments. As the District battles a rise in less serious crime, it may be a customer.
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