Homicides in Minneapolis have fallen sharply in 2009 amid an extraordinary trend of less violent crime nationwide, a ray of good news at the end of a year darkened by crippling recession and high unemployment.

Following a pattern seen from New York City to Los Angeles, the city has logged only 19 homicides so far this year. Should that number hold through Thursday, it will mark a whopping 50 percent reduction from the previous year and the city’s lowest number of homicides in a quarter century.

It would be far less than the 10-year average of 48 homicides and a mere slice of the city’s record of 97, set in 1995.

“It’s absolutely amazing,” said Sondra Samuels, the president of the Peace Foundation, a group formed several years ago to combat violence on the city’s North Side.

A few years ago, members of the group were so busy holding candlelight vigils at murder scenes that they had little time for anything else. This year, with only seven killings on the North Side, they have had time to launch an aggressive effort to help the neighborhood’s families get their kids through school and into college.

No one seems to have a ready explanation for the steep decline, with credit going to everything from better police work to better security technology to a better job of clearing alleys of garbage and graffiti.

Even as people spoke this week of a sense of calm in formerly battle-scarred neighborhoods, others said any celebrations should be tempered by the reality that crime still degrades far too many lives.

“Crime is a very personal thing, and if your house has been burglarized, then the fact that our homicide statistics are low probably doesn’t mean much to you,” said Larry Hiscock, executive director of the Harrison Neighborhood Association.

Still, the statistics signal a remarkable change, and not just in Minnesota. New York City police reported this week that the city is on pace to finish the year with fewer murders than in any year going back at least to 1963.

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