New York, NY – Days after a Brooklyn cop and a Queens politician accused the police of cooking its crime statistics, a survey of more than one hundred retired NYPD higher-ups showed that cops—who are under constant pressure to produce happy-looking stats—have routinely fabricated or manipulated their data, since the crime analysis system was put into place in 1995. And, the statistics they produce are the very same that Bloomberg quotes when he says the city is safe, and getting safer every year.
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“Those people in the CompStat era felt enormous pressure to downgrade index crime, which determines the crime rate, and at the same time they felt less pressure to maintain the integrity of the crime statistics,” said John A. Eterno, one of the researchers and a former NYPD captain.
“As one person said, the system provides an incentive for pushing the envelope,” another researcher, Eli B. Silverman told the NY Times.
Together with Eterno he’s writing a book tentatively titled “Unveiling Compstat: The Naked Truth.” Researchers think that for one, there was a periodic practice, of underreporting the value of goods stolen, so that there would be fewer grand larcenies (thefts of over $1000) on the record.
Other times, they believe that precinct commanders and aides went to crime scenes to convince victims not to file complaints, or to encourage them to file less serious complaints.
Paul J. Browne, the chief police spokesman, said the study was flawed because of its anonymity, and because multiple respondents could be remembering the same incidents. He added that there have been two other, better studies analyzing crime stats. One, administered by NYU concluded that, “the city and department officials, and the public can be reasonably assured that the N.Y.P.D. data are accurate, complete and reliable.”
Still, those surveyed were frank in their criticism of the system. “CompStat was a good idea in theory,” wrote one respondent. “However the process rules managerial decisions. We do not manage to serve people but to lower crime statistics any way we can because your career depends on it.”
100 % TRUE!!!!
Why am i not surprised? Because everything is manipulated these days.
let them match it with the insurance comp. data of claims
No surprise . This is Blumberg running the city. He is a fake.
I don’t know whom to believe anymore. If they can manipulate this data, then everything can be tampered with! How can we know that the esrog wasn’t tampered with? Although it’s clean now – but maybe it had flecken and it was “manipulated” off so its rendered pussel? This is a great mussar for all of us not to always rely on others(even things with hechshers) but we should take some of these important matters into our own hands and get ourselves involved a little more. We live in a very spoiled generation. Everything available in the most convenient ways. Milk sold in beautiful plastic containers. But imagine bending over to milk the cow yourself once in a while!! Get the point? Not sure that I do either..
This brings to attention what we all in williamsburg know for a fact. That the police will always try to convince you not to file a police report for a vandalized car etc. saying: this is nothing…
All because to keep crime low…
And I bet you if bloomberg runs for another term these dumb nyorkers will vote him in again
We should always be skeptical of any statistic that makes the entrenched power look good. Crimes that can’t be faked in statistics, like murder, really are down, though.
It started under Giuliani. I was a Dean at Bronx HS of Science in those days and we had youngsters being attacked by gangs on the subway on a regular basis but I noticed that “crime” numbers kept going down according to official reports. There is an old saying, “Figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.”