Robert Gangi of the Police Reform Organizing Project, which has undertaken a project to monitor who appears in arraignment court, said, “There’s been a decrease in the number of arrests, but it’s still a lot of arrests, and it’s still starkly racially biased, and racially skewed.”

Image Commissioner William J. Bratton Credit... Andrew Burton/Getty Images

“That’s not changing,” he added. “To us, that’s the news.”

Despite warnings that protests against police brutality had caused officers to back down and crime to rise — a so-called Ferguson effect — an analysis in October by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan public policy institute affiliated with the New York University School of Law, found a slight decline in crime over all in the nation’s largest cities. Some, like Chicago and Philadelphia, recorded lower levels of crime, the study found; others, like Los Angeles and Houston, saw an increase.

The homelessness visible on the streets “is not something that, from what I have seen, is in any way driving crime,” said Dermot F. Shea, the deputy commissioner who oversees the Police Department’s CompStat crime-analysis efforts.

Early in the year, police commanders in New York said they were distressed by a rise in shootings. By the end of 2015, what had been a 10 percent increase in shootings had become a 2 percent decline, to 1,109 through Dec. 20, from 1,132 by the same point last year. But, as has long been the case, Mr. Shea said, one-fifth of all shootings took place in the relatively small area covered by public housing developments.

And, increasingly, gun violence was to blame in murders.

“Even in a year when we’re going to be down in shootings, we are up significantly in homicides by shooting,” Mr. Shea said.

Officials have highlighted a program that began late last year in north and central Brooklyn. Known as Operation Ceasefire, it is meant to reduce violence by having the authorities communicate directly to gang members responsible for much of the shooting, warning in advance that all members will face stiff enforcement action if violence continues.

The program, which also offers social services, has made a significant dent in shootings, officials said.