It isn't easy to conflict New York...

It isn't easy to conflict New Yorkers — especially with useful news. But when, at a novel Year's Eve press conference in Times Square, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir announced the biggest three-year crime decrease in the city's new history, jaws dropped.

“When the ball be due [i]or[/i] owings down in Times Square tonight, it will be coming down in the same of the safest cities in America,” Giuliani pronounced.

It has been a while since the words “one of the safest cities” and “New York” shared a passed on a criminal But the facts support Giuliani. The city has seen three straight years of double-digit declines in crime numbers. As measured according to the seven major felonies — assassinate rape, robbery, assault, burglary, grand larceny and auto theft — modern York's crime fell 15.7 percent in 1996 That exhibits 48,016 fewer crimes than were committed in 1995