Hello Summer, Hello Homicide

Ah summertime: sunkissed skin, sunny days...and a better chance at getting brutally murdered. The NY Times has a story, accompanied by a cheery map, tracking homicides in the city—specifically how their numbers go up along with the temperature. The paper actually calls New York in the summer months a "distinctively lethal place," following their multiyear analysis of murder trends compiled from records dated 2003 to 2008.

The highest number of murders last year took place in August and September, with September Saturdays around 10 p.m. being the deadliest hour. The paper explains that "Summer is when people get together. More specifically, casual drinkers and drug users are more likely to go to bars or parties on weekends and evenings, as opposed to a Tuesday morning. These people in the social mix, flooding the city’s streets and neighborhood bars, feed the peak times for murder."

Other trends: women are least likely to be victims or killers, and if they are the former chances are they knew their killer (8 women died at the hands of a stranger last year). Meanwhile, Brooklyn comes in first place in murders, with the most of all boroughs (Crown Heights is particularly bloody). But don't fear (too much), it's not like the Summer of Sam is upon us once again, and overall the city's shown a decline in killings over the last 15 years.