New York crime numbers hoax unravels

Gee, tell me something I don't know!

Over 100 retired New York City police officials now say that the department was pressured to manipulate crime statistics for political purposes.

Ya think???

They actually expected us to believe the crime rate was falling?

The bogus statistics were used by right-wing mayors "Bedbug Rudy" Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg to make it appear that their unconstitutional and heavy-handed crime-fighting methods worked.

In numerous cases, police were pressured into lowering the value of stolen items so the thefts would be counted as misdemeanors instead of felonies.

If anyone was shot on New Year's Eve, hospitals were told to keep the victims on life support until New Year's Day and let them die then. By delaying their death, the murder statistics for the year in which they were shot would become lower, enabling public officials to brag about the "drop" in crime. But hospitals refused to go along with this order.

Victims of other crimes were often persuaded not to file charges or to change their stories so the perps would be charged with a lesser offense.

Unfortunately, this tampering with crime statistics isn't limited to New York. The same phenomenon has been found in Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, New Orleans, and Washington.

The declining crime rate of the '90s and '00s was a hoax. It's one of the biggest frauds perpetrated on the American public in modern times. It was a coordinated propaganda effort to build support for the growing prison state.

This hoax bore so little resemblance to the public's actual experiences that I wonder if it was even effective. But now it's exposed as the sham that it is.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/nyregion/07crime.htm)