By Michelle Han
A sharp rise this year in the murder rate in Queens and the rest of the city is most likely a statistical aberration in a decade-long decline, experts and law enforcement officials said this week.
Murders have escalated in the southern tier of Queens by a larger percentage than in any other borough as a whole, but homicides across the city were still far below the record 2,245 killings carried out in 1990.
Queens law enforcement officials said they were refocusing crime prevention techniques to try to quash incidents like the spate of Queens murders in recent months that have kept investigators busy.
With 102 murders having been committed through Oct. 31, the Queens homicide rate was 16 percent higher than what it was in the same period last year, according to New York Police Department figures.
