CM Morano on crime data revision transparency and public corrections

One final question, if I may, Chair.

One, finally.

Briefly, there was some skepticism expressed by several of my colleagues on the left and the right about whether or not the numbers are an accurate reflection of what's happening, right?

The council's briefing paper identifies an example from February of 2025.

The NYPD initially reported 19 murders and 140 rapes, and then those figures were subsequently revised to 24 murders and 158 rapes.

I understand that investigations evolve and legitimate revisions are necessary.

When the department announces historic crime reductions and the underlying numbers subsequently change,

Does it ever issue a public correction or reconciliation?

And would you support publishing a monthly report showing crimes added, removed, upgraded, downgraded after those preliminary statistics are announced?

Right.

So a few different pieces of that question.

I want to try to answer all of them if I can.

So one, I just want to take the example you gave, the murder number getting revised.

I mean, crimes get revised all the time for, not because anyone made even a mistake, but because the crime classification properly revises.

Murder is a perfect example.

And this may, this is almost certainly probably what happened in the case you're describing.

Someone was shot.

They are still alive.

So not.

A murder.

A month later, three months later, the person dies.

Now it's a murder, right?

It is now going to be reclassified as a murder.

That's not, no one did anything wrong.

It was at time one, it was not a murder.

At time two, it is a murder.

I want to give one other example.

I think it's really important.

You know, someone says, hey, I lost my property on the subway.

I lost my wallet.

I had my credit card in there.

I lost it.

Okay, we take that as lost property, not a crime at all.

Then a month later, unauthorized credit card usage.

Right?

Now it's a grand larceny.

You've gone from properly classified as not a crime at all to properly classified as a major seven.

So that's normal.

That's what you would expect.

And frankly, if there's any major police department in this country where you don't see that type of crime reclassification, that's a red flag.

That's a big problem.

Because this is what happens in the normal course.

Now, what we do is...

We archive all of these press releases.

Everything's archived.

So to the extent, right, there's been, you know, reporting or articles about these changes, that is all based on the data that we put out there to the public, to the public, right?

So there's no secrets here.

The reason why, like you're talking about, hey, at time one, you know, initially it was X number of murders.

And then later it's why number of murders, properly so, is because all of that is totally available to any member of the public, whether it's council members or journalists or academics.

So all that information is out there.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Murano.