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Here's David Simon (creator of The Wire) explaining how crime stats are 'juked'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw#t=19m00s

I'll try to paraphrase a key part:

He did acknowledge that while you can use various tricks to hide crime (turn robberies into larcenies), it's very difficult to massage the murder rate numbers since a state medical examiner usually classifies the death.

So how do you bring the murder rate down? They basically instilled a curfew in poorer neighborhoods, and swept the streets every night. Baltimore cops locked up something like a 100,000 people, in a city with about 650,000 people, most never charged with anything.

Definitely check the video out.



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