Look at these graphs. Crime has consistently fallen.
The article you linked is discussing a recent uptick after a stable period of low crime. They've cherry picked the statistics to not show the huge drop in crime over the past 40 years.
Yes, crime is down in Seattle.
https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/Police/Reports...
Seattle has less crime then it did 40, 30, and 20 years ago. The past three years were exceptional and the report does indicate increased rates of violent crime.
But we had a global pandemic, a contentious election, a spotlight on police brutality, etc.
I guess you can make the call, whether you think that's a trend or an anomaly, but when I look at the data I see us having a crime rate half of what it used to be, with an uptick in the most unusual years in a generation.
Police definitely lie a lot, and invest significant resources in outreach and PR, which we would straightforwardly call propaganda if someone else was doing it. The motivations are probably more complex than just what makes them look bad. And the mechanisms are probably more sophisticated than simply publishing completely false data in a report.
> Also do you really think the police intentionally misreport numbers that make themselves look bad?
But basically yes I do.