New York City has deadly weekend following violent crime drop

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York saw a spate of killings over the weekend, days after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a drop in fatal shootings and stabbings since the start of summer in some of the city's high-crime neighborhoods.

Six men between the ages of 20 and 56 were shot or stabbed to death in the boroughs of Brooklyn, Staten Island and the Bronx between late on Friday and early Sunday, the New York City Police Department said.

The weekend crime follows de Blasio's announcement on Wednesday that murders and shootings had dropped by about a third in areas of each of the boroughs under a police patrol program aimed at preventing a seasonal spike in crime.

The Summer All Out program, which sends 330 extra patrol officers to 10 precincts and public housing complexes in the four boroughs outside of Manhattan for three summer months, was deployed a month early this year.

At least two of the six killings happened in areas targeted by that program. It could not immediately be ascertained whether the others also did.

The early roll-out followed reports that homicides and shootings had risen during the first half of 2015 after years of plummeting violent crime rates in the country's most populous city.

As of Sunday, New York registered 186 homicides since January 1, up from 169 in the same period the year before, police said.

Of the weekend slayings, five were caused by gunfire and one by stabbing.

The lone stabbing death was of 56-year-old Mohammad Razzaq, who was found dead in his Brooklyn home late on Saturday, police said. Razzaq's teenage son has been charged with the murder.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Scott Malone and Christian Plumb)