WTF! WITH SO MANY COPS ON THE STREET! WHY IS NYC'S MURDER RATE GOING UP?

Four shootings marred the predawn hours Sunday, with each incident claiming a life and three wounding at least one victim, police said.
The bloodshed marked the second consecutive Sunday in which four people were slain, as the city's homicide rate continued to hover slightly above last year's record-low tally.

Rafael Otero, 27, was killed in a hail of at least 14 bullets that also wounded his girlfriend's daughter, Sugeily Rodriguez, 14, as they walked home on E. 172nd St. in the Bronx shortly before 3 a.m.

Otero's girlfriend, Janet Rentas, 36, said they were returning from a party on Metcalf Ave. The party was for "Spanish only," and a fight broke out when a group of black people showed up, Rentas said.

The gunfire left Otero with a fatal neck wound and Rodriguez with a bullet in her buttocks, cops said.

Rentas said "everyone ran" when the shots rang out, but she went back to help Otero before realizing her daughter, who was in stable condition at a hospital Sunday night, also had been struck.

"I try to help him, but there is so much blood rushing from his neck and I already see his eyes rolled back in his head," Rentas said.

About 12:40 a.m., in the first homicide of the day, 22-year-old Nazario Bleu was killed by a gunshot to the torso on Waring Ave. near the Pelham Parkway Houses in the Bronx, police said.

A second man, 25, was shot three times - once in each leg and in an arm - but managed to stagger into a nearby building to dial 911, police said. He was in stable condition Sunday night.

About an hour later, in Brooklyn, three people were shot, one fatally, following a block party in the vicinity of Tompkins Ave. and Kosciuszko St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, police said.

Jamel Johnson, 23, who lived a block from the shooting scene, died of a gunshot to the head.

Two other men - ages 29 and 39 - each were shot in the leg and were in stable condition.

Witnesses recalled hearing six shots ring out, but no one said he saw the shooter.

In Queens, at about 6:40 a.m., Barri Jahoor, 35, of Jamaica Hills, a welder who worked the overnight shift as a cabbie, was slain in the vicinity of Liberty Ave. and 135th St. in Ozone Park. Neighbors said the killing happened outside an all-night party at a barbershop.

Jahoor, originally from Trinidad and Tobago, was shot multiple times in the stomach. His brother Nigel Jahoor, 34, said detectives told him it may have been a robbery gone bad.

"He was a good brother, good uncle and a good friend to everyone he knew," he said. "It's going to be hard for my mom and dad to bury him."

In another incident that police said appeared to be connected to the Jahoor slaying, an unidentified 34-year-old man was shot in the stomach and arrived at Jamaica Hospital by private means. His condition was critical.

Police officials refused to discuss the motives behind each homicide. There were no arrests as of early Sunday night.

So far this year, 237 people have been slain in the city, compared with 211 at the same point last year - a 12.3% jump - according to NYPD statistics through July 4, the most recent data available.