Here are specific examples of crime statistics being underreported or inaccurate, drawn from documented cases and reliable sources:
1. **San Diego, CA (2007–2008)**: A KGTV 10News investigation revealed systemic underreporting by the San Diego Police Department (SDPD). Victims and officers reported that crimes like assaults, robberies, and attempted rapes were not documented to keep official numbers low. In 2004, SDPD took reports for only 8% of calls for service, compared to 21% for LAPD and 23% for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. Whistleblowers alleged directives to avoid taking reports unless absolutely necessary, with one officer comparing it to “cooking the books.” Victims, like a woman attacked in Mission Valley, had reports promised but never filed.[](https://www.powermentor.org/blog/underreporting-crime-in-the-united-states-20052025-a-20year-investigative-review)
2. **Los Angeles, CA (2014–2015)**: A city audit found that the Los Angeles Police Department misclassified over 14,000 aggravated assaults as minor crimes, underreporting the 2014 aggravated assault count by approximately 23%. This skewed the perception of violent crime trends in the city.[](https://www.powermentor.org/blog/underreporting-crime-in-the-united-states-20052025-a-20year-investigative-review)
3. **Washington, D.C. (2025)**: A Metropolitan Police commander was disciplined for altering crime classifications, including coding overdose deaths as “natural” instead of drug-related to reduce reported crime totals. This contributed to inconsistencies in violent crime data, as noted in a 2023 D.C. Auditor report.[](https://www.powermentor.org/blog/underreporting-crime-in-the-united-states-20052025-a-20year-investigative-review)
4. **Atlanta, GA (2002–2004)**: An internal audit revealed that 3.2% of Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Part I crimes were underreported, with some crimes downgraded to lesser categories to artificially lower crime statistics.[](https://www.powermentor.org/blog/underreporting-crime-in-the-united-states-20052025-a-20year-investigative-review)
5. **Milwaukee, WI (2012)**: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel exposed that hundreds of serious assaults were misclassified as minor incidents, artificially reducing the city’s violent crime statistics.[](https://www.powermentor.org/blog/underreporting-crime-in-the-united-states-20052025-a-20year-investigative-review)
6. **Baltimore, MD (2010)**: The Baltimore Sun reported that police routinely “unfounded” rape cases, marking them as “no crime” without proper investigation, leading to significant underreporting of sexual assault.[](https://www.powermentor.org/blog/underreporting-crime-in-the-united-states-20052025-a-20year-investigative-review)
7. **New Orleans, LA (2014)**: Reports from the City Inspector General and the Department of Justice found that the sex crimes unit misclassified rapes as non-criminal events, leaving many cases uninvestigated and underreported.[](https://www.powermentor.org/blog/underreporting-crime-in-the-united-states-20052025-a-20year-investigative-review)
8. **Austin, TX (2018–2022)**: A ProPublica/Newsy investigation uncovered the overuse of “exceptional clearance” to close sexual assault cases without arrests, inflating clearance rates and underreporting unresolved cases.[](https://www.powermentor.org/blog/underreporting-crime-in-the-united-states-20052025-a-20year-investigative-review)
9. **New York City, NY (2010–2013)**: The Village Voice’s “NYPD Tapes” and internal reviews documented CompStat-driven downgrading of felonies to misdemeanors, such as reclassifying aggravated assaults as minor offenses, to improve crime statistics.[](https://www.powermentor.org/blog/underreporting-crime-in-the-united-states-20052025-a-20year-investigative-review)
10. **FBI NIBRS Transition (2021–2023)**: The FBI’s shift to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) in 2021 led to nearly 40% of U.S. police agencies failing to submit data, creating a national blind spot. This resulted in incomplete and unreliable national crime trends for those years, as reported by the Marshall Project and FBI data.[](https://www.powermentor.org/blog/underreporting-crime-in-the-united-states-20052025-a-20year-investigative-review)[](https://govfacts.org/analysis/us-crime-statistics-what-10-years-of-data-shows/)
11. **National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) Discrepancies**: The NCVS, conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, consistently shows higher crime rates than FBI UCR data due to unreported crimes. For example, in 2022, only 41.5% of violent crimes and 31.8% of household property crimes were reported to police, with just 21.4% of rape/sexual assaults reported, highlighting a significant “dark figure” of crime.[](https://govfacts.org/analysis/us-crime-statistics-what-10-years-of-data-shows/)
12. **Package Theft in NYC (2019)**: A City Journal article cited a 2019 NYC Department of Transportation report estimating 90,000 packages stolen or lost annually, but these incidents were rarely reflected in official crime statistics due to underreporting by victims and police. These examples illustrate systemic issues like misclassification, unfounding, discouraging reports, and incomplete data submission, all contributing to inaccurate crime statistics. If you’d like, I can dig deeper into any of these cases or search for more recent examples.
I believe the crime rates have probably dropped from their all-time highs the last few years, but it really is anybody's guess how much as numbers have been played with, unreported or underreported.
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