On Chicago's far South Side, on a wall in the Paul Hall Community Center, is a list of the 924 people murdered in this city last year, Chicago's second-highest homicide total ever.

Brooklyn is now the site of 40 percent of all murders in the city and has 5 of the 10 precincts with the highest homicide totals.

In fact, if the murder rate remains unchanged, New York will have the lowest homicide total at the end of the year since the city began systematically recording murders in 1962, the police said.

Through the year, as the homicide total and headlines mounted, it was not only the public that came to feel overwhelmed.

This increased the year's homicide total from 196 to 197.

Not all police departments in cities where the homicide totals are climbing attribute increases to expanding drug use.

Those, they say, have helped reduce the 24th Precinct's annual homicide total from 23 in 1993 to 4 in 1995.

Two violent deaths over the weekend brought Camden's record-setting homicide total up to 59 for the year, The Associated Press reported.

Crack Is Cited Earlier in the week, the police said that although definitive figures were not yet available, New York City's 12-month homicide total had almost certainly eclipsed the 1981 record, when 1,826 people were slain.

The homicide total of 17, though hardly a number to compare with the murderous days of the early 90's, is still nearly double the total at the same time last year.