You want to look good? Violent crime is down. You need more funding? It’s up. You need arrests? Send your people out to make a bunch of bullshit busts that will never get convictions. You don’t care—convictions are the DA’s problem—you just want the arrest numbers. You want to prove drugs are down in your sector? Send your guys on “search and avoid” missions where there aren’t any drugs. That’s half the scam. The other way to manipulate the numbers is to let officers know they should downgrade charges from felonies to misdemeanors. So you call a straight-up robbery a “petit larceny,” a
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