Nonexistent Police Quotas Show up on Tape

If true, how widespread is this? Emphasis added. [Link]

The quota allegations stemmed from several audio recordings made by Officer Adil Polanco of instructions given to him and other officers by various superiors. When the recordings surfaced, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said officers are encouraged to meet "goals," but denied the existence of arrest or citation quotas. As for the charge that the NYPD was burying reports of actual crime, those allegations came from a survey of retired high-ranking NYPD officers conducted by two Molloy College criminologists. The NYPD dismissed the study, while critics such as the Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald called it "irredeemably flawed."

Now comes another set of recordings from another New York precinct that validates both the Molloy study and Polanco's allegations. Earlier this month, the Village Voice obtained over 100 recordings of roll call meetings in Brooklyn's 81st precinct made by Officer Adrian Schoolcraft. They're damning.

Schoolcraft, for example, recorded a fellow officer lamenting that he'd been instructed to downgrade a car theft to "unauthorized use of a vehicle," as well as to find a way around reporting the thefts of a cell phone and video game system. In another recording, Schoolcraft captured the results as he voiced his concerns about crime stats manipulation to a unit within the department that audits such data. One officer with the unit acknowledged the political pressure to juke the stats. "The mayor's looking for it, the police commissioner's looking for it...every commanding officer wants to show it," he said. "So there's motivation not to classify reports for the seven major crimes."

In other words, the statistical manipulation extends beyond property crimes. Journalist Debbie Nathan, who was sexually assaulted in a city park last February, says that she was shocked to learn that the officers who wrote up her report classified the crime as a misdemeanor. It was later upgraded to a felony, but only after Nathan went to the district attorney. And according to the DA's investigation, the six officers who responded to Nathan's attack admitted leaving key portions of her story out of the report. As Nathan told the Village Voice, rape crisis centers throughout New York City have documented similar complaints from victims of sexual assault.

What. The. Hell.

Playing numbers games and the only ones hurt are the victims.