In Atlanta, the crime statistics are down because the recently-departed police chief set up a system where his performance (and that of his underlings, all the way down) was measured based on the information that made it into the computer system. Apparently, he has made a career out of installing this system when he is appointed in a new city. As with defect tracking systems in many businesses, there is a tendency from the top down to game the system, redefine terms, and reclassify crime reports as lesser crimes or mere 'incident' reports. When your job and compensation starts to depend on statistics emitted by a computer, self-preservation leads to dishonesty. The administration in Atlanta continues to resist the creation of a citizen review board with actual teeth--one that can do more than sit in review of a few high-profile incidents and instead focus on seeking independent crime statistics to really guage the performance of the police department. I don't know about other cities, but I suspect the use of such crime stats packages is common in many jurisdictions.