A day after the NYPD released its crime statistics for December, Mayor Eric Adams celebrated what he called significant progress in public safety but pointed to one persistent roadblock holding the city back: recidivism rates.

 “If I had to use one term I would say recidivism,” Adams told NY1 “Mornings on 1” anchor Rocco Vertuccio Friday. “We have about 1,600 people in this city that are recidivists. They are dangerous, they are continually committing crimes over and over again and we must zero in on them to send the right message that our criminal justice system is going to handle them accordingly.”

Thursday’s crime report from the NYPD showed significant decreases in crime across several key categories, including murder, rape, robbery and grand larceny compared with the same month in 2021.

The NYPD logged 26.1% fewer murders year-over-year in December, 25.9% fewer grand larcenies, 11.5% fewer rapes, 10.2% fewer burglaries and 8.3% fewer robberies.

And December, like November, saw a decrease in overall crime compared with the same month in 2021, with 11.6% fewer crimes reported.

The number of hate crimes reported to the NYPD also declined, from 54 in December 2021 to 29 last month. 

However, in total, police logged 126,537 crimes in 2022 — a 22.4% increase from 2021, when the five boroughs recorded 103,388 crimes, NYPD data shows.

On the immigration crisis, Adams also praised the Biden administration, which on Thursday announced a new legal pathway for up to 30,000 migrants per month from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua to temporarily come to the United States, as officials also plan to begin expelling people at the border from the same countries under pandemic-related restrictions.

 “This was so important, we saw what happened when the border was just open and everyone was allowed to come through. It impacted our city directly because unfortunately other municipalities decided to send people only to New York City,” Adams said.

 Still, Adams said, much more needs to be done.

 “This is a humanitarian crisis created by man, and man needs to fix it,” he said.