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Violent Crime Rising, NATO Says Kabul Safer Than NYC
By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 22, 2010
Modified Nov 22, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 22, 2010
Modified Nov 22, 2010
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As of November 7th, overall crime in NYC has dropped 1.26% from a year earlier. But violent crime—the murders, rapes, assaults and robberies—are all on pace to increase, and a professor emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice says the discrepancy is caused by the NYPD's manipulation of statistics. Eli Silverman, who co-authored a report which found that more than half of the city's cops under-report crime to satisfy the top brass, says non-violent crime is "down" because it's easy to downgrade or under-report those crimes. Murder and rape are not so easily shrugged off.
"They've made it [low crime] symbolic for all their achievements," Silverman tells the Wall Street Journal. "They've made it a selling point for tourism and business….They made it a narrative, a story and they can't deviate from that story. They're stuck in that story." The NYPD says Silverman's study is flawed because it relies on an anonymous survey of past police officials, and anyway a one-year spike in violent crimes is well within natural statistical fluctuations. Statistician Michael Rand points out that one-year spikes are statistically insignificant: "A 15% increase is only important if it's the beginning of an upturn. And unfortunately we won't know that for many years."
In fact, the Journal crunches the numbers a different way and finds that when you tally the index-crime average during Commissioner Kelly's previous eight years, violent crimes are actually down from the eight-year average. Murders are on track to total 536 this year, down 2% compared to the eight-year average. Rapes, up 15% this year so far, would still be about 12% lower than that eight-year average.
So who knows? Most of us have heard stories about cops discouraging crime victims from filing a report. And the Daily News reports that three murders in NYC over the weekend tipped the murder tally above last year's record low. But hey, if you don't like it, you can just move to Afghanistan!
Tagged
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Crime Statistics
nypd
violent crime
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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