City Unlikely to Set Another Slaying Record : Crime: Downturn in murders, among other things, is hard to explain, officials say.

San Diego is unlikely to break a homicide record this year and is expected to show a decline in murders for the first time since 1989, detectives said Wednesday.

With 36 days to go before the end of the year, the city had 136 murders, compared to 167 last year--a record for the city.

A murder would have to occur just about every day to break last year’s record, and “we don’t see that happening,” homicide Lt. John Welter said Wednesday.

Last December there were eight murders, and in December, 1990, there were 10, Welter said.

Among the surprises in the homicide downturn is a drop in three major areas over last year: domestic murders have plunged from 22 to 8, gang-related deaths have fallen from 20 to 14, and narcotics-related homicides have decreased from 24 to 14.

Like other detectives who investigate murders for a living, Welter is at a loss to find the causes of the decline.

“People ask me how we could have a 15% to 20% drop, and I can’t explain it, because there are so many variables,” Welter said. “It’s hard to say which variables have led to this.”

Although the city is hurt by a sour economy and increasing joblessness, those factors seem not to have influenced the crime rate, officials said.

And while detectives always point to the proliferation of drugs and guns in a city that is growing larger and more dangerous each year, they could not say why 1992 isn’t showing ever-higher numbers of shootings and killings.

San Diego set an all-time murder record last year, when 167 people were murdered and 12 others were accidentally killed, for a total of 179 homicides.

The numbers had increased steadily since 1989, when the city recorded 118 murders and 133 homicides, then climbed to 135 murders and 158 homicides in 1990.

As late as July of this year, detectives believed the city would set another record when six people were killed in one weekend. At that time, Welter attributed the killings to the hot summer months. But the pace slowed during the fall, especially in October and November.

Overall crime in the city this year is down 5%, statistics show. Through the end of September, reported rapes totaled 370 this year, compared with 368 in the same period last year. Robberies are slightly up, from 3,955 to 4,011. Aggravated assault is up from 5,964 to 6,760, and overall violent crime is up 8%, from 10,423 to 11,257.

All types of property crimes, however, are down, statistics show.

Burglary is down about 3%, from 13,036 to 12,695, theft is down about 10%, from 34,247 to 30,887 and motor vehicle theft is down about 7%, from 63,328 to 58,797.

Although surprised that murders attributed to domestic disputes, gang activity and narcotics were down, Welter said those numbers may well rise by the end of the year, as investigators determine the cause of unsolved slayings in the weeks to come.

The most dramatic drop came in domestic-related homicides, even as reports of domestic disputes to the Police Department have begun to rise. For the past 10 months, the department got 11,990 reports, compared to 11,739 for all of last year.

In August, the department started a domestic-violence unit, composed of 19 detectives and three sergeants who investigate only family problems.

“I can’t believe there isn’t a correlation between our investigations and these homicides going down,” Sgt. Anne O’Dell of the unit said. “We arrest about 400 people a month on domestic disputes, and I think that sends a message. It’s a message that this is a crime and we’re not going to tolerate it.”