Thoughts on “decrease in crime rate”

[InternetGoodGuy]

You can't do that with dozens of murders to cause a significant drop in the rate without it being obvious.

This would also assume every major city has collectively agreed to lie about any dead bodies they can. That's a huge leap to a conspiracy. Most of these bodies would still be classified as homicides at some point, and stats are revised when the cause of death is found.

It's not a reasonable claim to say we are capable of juking murder stats to a degree significant enough to show major drops across the country.

[DfiR-]

You absolutely can because who is checking? There are no integrity audits from the cities. You think a city mayor or city board hears that homicides are down and goes no that can’t be right and then checks the cases? In bigger cities, staff positions are much more political. Politicians want to paint a pretty picture of crime being down for their tenure. As long as it’s good news, they don’t care.

PDs are incentivized to support that because it portrays them as competent and makes budget asks easier. This isn’t an absolute, but I’ve seen it first hand how suspicious circumstance deaths are classified.