Mayor Bloomberg defends accuracy of NYPD's crime stats

Mayor Bloomberg defended the accuracy of the NYPD's crime statistics on Monday - even as he acknowledged that some cops manipulate them.

"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."

The Daily News reported last week that the NYPD's Quality Assurance Division is probing Brooklyn's 81st Precinct after an officer complained that cops routinely downgraded felonies and refused to take victims' reports to keep numbers low.

Bloomberg complained that a recent survey of hundreds of retired NYPD commanders, which reported widespread pressure to tinker with crime statistics, may have been biased.

"This is a study that you're referring to that was paid for by one of the unions," the mayor said. "So you've got to start wondering whether it was an independent study."

In fact, the survey by two criminologists was done in conjunction with the union for superior officers, but was funded by Molloy College in Rockville Centre, L.I.

Bloomberg said studies by the state controller in 2001 and NYU Prof. Dennis Smith in 2006 validated the NYPD's numbers.

Eli Silverman, one of the two criminologists who surveyed the NYPD retirees, said yesterday the NYU report is based largely on what the department's own auditors said.

"It's a glorified press release masking as a study," Silverman said.

Daily News

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