It's interesting to read the comments sections of this article. First, he doesn't cite where he gets those statistics from or how he arrived at it in the article. In the comments sections, it says he wrote it to create controversy to sell his book which is coming out next month and that you have to buy the book to find out how he arrived at those numbers.
Second, in the comments section, there's also mention of large scale illegal searches called "stop and frisk" used in NYC and that there is an unwritten rewards and promotion system for officers on reaching quotas to how many they do per month. After 9/11, NYC residents are more open to "stop and frisk" and police state tactics, but I'm not sure the average law abiding citizen in Detroit would put up with being randomly searched on the street on a regular basis by beat cops because they didn't share that level of tragedy like NYC residents did in their city.
Third, from the comments section, there's evidence that NYPD is manipulating crime statistics for compstat. Two years ago, a police officer named Adrian Schoolcraft at the 81st Brooklyn precinct began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors. What he found was the the precinct was refusing to take major crime reports or downgrade them to minor crimes to manipulate the data for Compstat.
http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-05-...precinct/full/
Several examples from the article, for example:
During a September 12, 2009, roll call, a fellow cop tells Schoolcraft: "A lot of 61s—if it's a robbery, they'll make it a petty larceny. I saw a 61, at T/P/O [time and place of occurrence], a civilian punched in the face, menaced with a gun, and his wallet was removed, and they wrote 'lost property.' "
The practice of downgrading crimes has been the NYPD's scandal-in-waiting for years. ... the
Voice was told anecdotally of burglaries rejected if the victim didn't have receipts for the items stolen; of felony thefts turned into misdemeanor thefts by lowballing the value of the property; of robberies turned into assaults; of assaults turned into harassments.
Another example, "...a robbery complaint would be rejected if the victim was unable to come to the stationhouse. It didn't matter if a victim was unable to come down because he or she had to work or take care of kids. Perhaps not coincidentally, that would also be one less robbery to count against the precinct's crime statistics."
Other examples:
During the meeting, Schoolcraft provides documentation on an incident from December 5, 2008, that was initially taken as an attempted robbery—a teen reported that he was attacked by a gang of thugs who beat him and tried to take his portable video game—and later downgraded by a sergeant to an misdemeanor assault.
In the meeting, the QAD officers check their computer files and find that, indeed, the incident was classified as a misdemeanor assault.
Schoolcraft also provides documents from a June 29, 2009, auto theft report, in which the victim came in to obtain the report number, but no report existed. A sergeant told Schoolcraft to do a new report.
Schoolcraft tells the QAD officers that Mauriello came to the desk and told him, "I'm not taking this. Have the guy come in. I've gotta talk to him."
A couple of days later, the man arrived and was ushered into Mauriello's office. Mauriello interrogated the victim and his cousin. "There was yelling," Schoolcraft says. "They were in there for about 40 minutes. The cousin stormed out of the office yelling and screaming."
The stolen car complaint became an unlawful use of a motor vehicle, Schoolcraft said.
In another incident, an elderly man walked in off the street to report that someone had broken the lock on the cash box in his apartment and had stolen $22,000. When he reported the incident at another precinct, he was told that it was a "civil matter" and to call 3-1-1, the city's complaint hotline.
The desk sergeant told Schoolcraft to send the victim back to the other precinct because he was "loopy."
Among many other incidents Schoolcraft discussed were:
* A man walked in to report that he was choked unconscious and robbed of his wallet. He left with a slip that would allow him to renew his driver's license. Then, a detective came down and said, "If that guy comes back, don't let him upstairs."
* Another downgraded robbery from October 23, 2008: Two officers responded to a robbery and found a guy beaten up and bleeding. A lieutenant responded to the scene and said, "We can't take this robbery." It came in as a lost property.
Schoolcraft says he contacted the victim, who sent him a written statement detailing what had happened.