From the NY Post:
And on the second day, Mayor Bloomberg proclaimed that New Yorkers are safer from crime and death by fire than they have been in all but two other years over the last five decades.
Bloomberg, yesterday, held his second press conference in as many days to tout his administration’s achievements in improving the health and safety of New Yorkers during a year-end rollout of upbeat statistics.
Just 502 homicides were on the books, overall serious crime was down once again and fire deaths were at a near-record bottom. Ambulances were responding to the most serious emergencies quicker than ever.
The spectacular results got the mayor and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly talking about their accomplishments over the last decade, with Kelly quoting a professor who proclaimed the crime decline worthy of the Guinness World Records and “not seen anywhere in the developed world.”
The mayor and commissioner firmly rejected the possibility that the reduction was caused by societal or economic factors.
The NY Times explains how this gets accomplished:
Crime victims in New York sometimes struggle to persuade the police to write down what happened on an official report. The reasons are varied. Police officers are often busy, and few relish paperwork. But in interviews, more than half a dozen police officers, detectives and commanders also cited departmental pressure to keep crime statistics low.
While it is difficult to say how often crime complaints are not officially recorded, the Police Department is conscious of the potential problem, trying to ferret out unreported crimes through audits of emergency calls and of any resulting paperwork.
As concerns grew about the integrity of the data, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, appointed a panel of former federal prosecutors in January to study the crime-reporting system. The move was unusual for Mr. Kelly, who is normally reluctant to invite outside scrutiny.
The panel, which has not yet released its findings, was expected to focus on the downgrading of crimes, in which officers improperly classify felonies as misdemeanors.
But of nearly as much concern to people in law enforcement are crimes that officers simply failed to record, which one high-ranking police commander in Manhattan suggested was “the newest evolution in this numbers game.”
P.S. They classify homicides as suicides and accidents all the time, too.
12 comments:
If you really want to know the truth about the fudging of the crime stats, ask a cop. Not a Sergeant, not a Lieutenant, not a Captain, Dep Inspector, Inspector, CHief, not Ray Kelly, but a regular street cop. An average peaon white shield, who gets threatened every day to reclassify complaint reports in order to make the CO look good at CompStat. It is criminal what the police bosses are getting away with. The rank and file are complaining to anyone who will listen, yet no one in a posiion to do anything seems willing to take tis to the next level.
This is comforting. Sleep well, NYers, the Finest are on the case!
Yup, typical Bloomberg "data"- the books are seriously cooked!FTM, and prepare for Bloomie's PERP WALK!Might take a while, but eventually, it will happen.The house of cards will come down, just like the "unlimited cash out" housing bubble.
So what? almost all NY elected officials fudge numbers, oversate their accomplishements, and lie to us. (But we re-elect them nonetheless.)
I love the smell of cooked books in the morning...
When a cop or superior refuses to take a report.......call 1800pridepd and make a complaint. make sure you have a name,time,date etc.
Don't ask me. You voted for the little general, not me.
Time for a new commissioner,Kelly has been around for over 10 years.He will never get over the fact that Bratton turned the nypd around and created compstat ,,,,,,,
"P.S. They classify homicides as suicides and accidents all the time, too."
Interesting.
Are there any specific cases that can be shown?
How about the recent case that was classified as an accident where a woman "tripped in the shower" and died, then her parents became suspicious and asked that the body be dug up and examined and it was determined to be a strangulation, aka murder?
"How about the recent case that was classified as an accident where a woman "tripped in the shower" and died, then her parents became suspicious and asked that the body be dug up and examined and it was determined to be a strangulation, aka murder?"
Strangulation, aka murder- Strangulation causes murder? Gee Crappy, you think?
And in return to that slightly sarcastic reply: Is that all you got?
The woman was not autopsied and buried the next day according to her religion and the medical examiner deferred to this custom basing his/her opinion on a cursory examination at the scene.
All this proves is a murder will slip by without a thorough investigation. This being one case with a unique set of circumstances hardly justifies such hyperbolic rhetoric as "P.S. They classify homicides as suicides and accidents all the time, too."
Wow, Cav, why are you so defensive? First of all, there was zero sarcasm in my reply. You asked for a specific case, I gave you one, and you aren't satisfied. So why'd you ask? The woman's purse and credit cards were missing but the police automatically assumed it was an accident? How about the poor kid who was sexually assaulted 2 years ago that was deemed "not credible" by the police and the perp committed the exact same crime on another kid last week? Lots of bullshit reporting going on in the NYPD.
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