New York City is on pace to record fewer than one homicide per day in 2013, heralding what authorities and experts said was a sea change in public safety in the city.

Through Thursday, there were 154 homicides in the city—a 24% decline from the same period in 2012. The drop comes after what the New York Police Department and the Bloomberg administration had already hailed as a landmark drop in homicides in 2012, when the city set a record low with just 419.

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