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Bloomberg: Crime Stat Manipulations are "Tiny"
By
Sabrina Jaszi
Published Feb 9, 2010
Modified Feb 9, 2010
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By
Sabrina Jaszi
Published Feb 9, 2010
Modified Feb 9, 2010
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Believe it or not, Mayor Bloomberg is insisting that the NYPD's crime statistics are accurate—well, most of the time. "There's always going to be some fudging of the numbers, but it is tiny," the mayor said. "I have an enormous amount of confidence in the data." He also suggested that a study by two criminologists, which showed police precincts routinely fudge their data, may have been biased. According to Bloomberg, it was "paid for by one of the unions, so you've got to start wondering whether it was an independent study."
Actually, although the survey was done in conjunction with the union for superior officers, it was funded by L.I.'s Molloy College, reports the Daily News. Still, for obvious reasons, Bloomberg prefers a 2006 NYU study that gave NYPD CompStat high grades for accuracy, thank you very much. Eli Silverman, who was in charge of the recent survey of over 1,000 retired police higher-ups, dismissed NYU's research: "It's a glorified press release masking as a study."
Of course, as the NY Times points out, Mayor Bloomberg loves statistics. He created 311 as a way to collect data for statistics, he's used statistics to justify school closings and quotes statistics just about every month. “I’m a great believer in the wisdom I learned in my first Wall Street job: In God we trust,” he said at a conference last May. “Everyone else, bring data.”
Tagged
compstat
crime
Crime Statistics
fraud
mayor bloomeberg
nypd
school closings
statistics
Sabrina Jaszi
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