As a retired LAPD officer (1980-2000), I recommend that you read "The Trouble with Compstat"
http://www.nycpba.org/publications/mag-04-summer/compstat.html.

The essay accurately describes ways that Bratton fudges the numbers. Crime isn't down - reporting is down. But the effort makes Bratton and Mayor V look like they're actually accomplishing something. They are, but making people FEEL better about rising crime is not much of an accomplishment... Maybe that's how they operate back East, but I prefer to be honest with my community. www.coptalkla.com

It was a great idea that has been corrupted by human nature. The Compstat program that made NYPD commanders accountable for controlling crime has degenerated into a situation where the police leadership presses subordinates to keep numbers low by any means necessary. The department’s middle managers will do anything to avoid being dragged onto the carpet at the weekly Compstat meetings. They are, by nature, ambitious people who lust for promotions, and rising crime rates won’t help anybody’s career.

The Compstat program was started when crime was at an all-time high, with over 2,000 homicides a year and countless felonies. The program called for the immediate tracking of crime, swift deployment of police resources to problem areas and what Compstat’s creator Jack Maple called relentless follow-up. The only problem is, it didn’t anticipate the “fudge factor.” That’s the characteristic that allows local commanders to make it look like crime has dropped when it has in fact increased.

COMPSTAT was initially implemented under NYPD Commissioner William Bratton, who had previously run New York’s independent Transit PD (which he then merged into the NYPD), the Boston PD. Since October, 2002, Bratton has run the Los Angeles PD. Bratton instituted COMPSTAT meetings at police headquarters. These became a form of public theater in which he routinely humiliated precinct commanders who had failed to produce the desired “numbers.” “Bad” (read: honest) numbers were career suicide.

Commanders quickly learned what Bratton wanted. And they communicated that knowledge through the ranks.

William Bratton left the NYPD in January 1996, but his model stayed. He and his associates have since spread it across the country. (Bratton’s number two man, John Timoney, was Philadelphia’s police commissioner from 1998-2001.) The result is a police and street culture, in which no one—save perhaps for livery drivers and restaurant deliverymen in poor neighborhoods—has any idea what the true face of crime looks like. But COMPSTAT/broken windows makes for great public relations.

Or at least it did, until the police unions stopped playing ball. In late March, as part of their tactic of negotiating a new labor contract through the media, the New York Police Department’s Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) and the Sergeants’ Benevolent Association (SBA) attacked the NYPD brass, charging that the city’s miraculously low crime rate has been achieved through—fraudulent arrest statistics.

On March 23, PBA president Patrick J. Lynch maintained:

"We've reached a point where some local N.Y.P.D. commanders are forced to falsify stats in order to maintain the appearance of a continued reduction in crime … “Some precinct commanders are cooking the books to make themselves look good. We’re hearing from our members across the city that these things are happening.”

SBA president Ed Mullins had made the same charges on March 3 against Capt. Sheldon Howard, the commander of Police Service Area 9, and on the 23rd, in a joint press release and press conference with the PBA, “calling upon police commissioner Ray Kelly to conduct a comprehensive citywide audit of crime and to develop procedures that will prevent police managers from downgrading or ignoring reported crimes.”

The unions charged the NYPD with fudging crime reporting citywide. But they emphasized fraud in Manhattan’s 10th Precinct, The Bronx’ 50th Precinct, and Police Service Area 10, which serves housing projects in six Queens precincts. The NYPD admitted only to misreporting in the 10th Precinct, dismissing the other charges out of hand. (Last June, the brass admitted that 203 felonies had been improperly downgraded to misdemeanors in the 10th Precinct during 2002.)

Here is the story... Our house was just off Melrose facing the alley behind Melrose. 1 AM saturday morning. I hear a car outside our bedroom... Look out wondow, yep... There is a car half in the street pointed at our house.... I go out to see whats up... Driver is PASSED OUT AT THE WHEEL... CAR IS RUNNING... IN GEAR... He has hit a pothole and that is all that is holding the car in place.... Call the cops... They come out... Wake him up (this takes SEVERAL MINUTES... HE IS DEAD TO THE WORLD). They turn the car off...

Now... At this point, you and I are handcuffed and tossed in the back of a car...

BUT...

He has NO I.D. And speaks NO ENGLISH....

They park his car next to our house and tell him to not to drive it until he is sober.

No arrest.... No report.... DUI ARRESTS ARE DOWN!!!! YAY!