Police Admit to Pressure to Keep Crime Stats Low: Report

Some New York City police officers say they’ve been pressured by their bosses to reduce the number of felony incidents reported, in an effort to keep crime statistics low, says the New York Times.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced a decline in crime, the paper said, while the actual crime rate rose in 2011, and is currently 4.4 percent higher than last year.

Kelly created a panel in January 2011 to analyze the crime-reporting system, but the panel has not issued a public report. In addition, the NYPD conducts regular audits of police reports to detect misclassified crimes; in 2011 the error rate was 1.5 percent.

In a review of more than 100 police reports from the last four months provided to the Times, the paper found a number of instances in which the police report made the crime out to be less serious than the district attorney—or a victim—would argue subsequently.