Chicago ? Despite a sharp drop in homicides, Chicago has regained a title it didn’t want: America’s murder capital.

The city finished 2003 with 599 homicides, police said Thursday. That was down from 648 a year earlier and the first time since 1967 that the total dipped below 600.

Still, the nation’s third-largest city outpaced all others for the second time in three years. New York, with about three times the population, ended the year with 596 homicides. Los Angeles, which had the most murders in 2002 at 658, wound up 2003 with an estimated total just under 500.

Preliminary figures from the District of Columbia showed the homicide rate dropping 6 percent in the nation’s capital, from 262 in 2002 to 247 last year. But 2004 began with two homicides in about nine hours.

In New York, the unofficial murder tally of 596 compared with 584 in 2002. That was a 2 percent jump but still made 2003 the city’s second straight year below 600 — dramatically less than the 2,245 homicides recorded in 1990.