The Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn Defender Services, The Bronx Defenders, New York County Defender Services and Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem issued a joint letter to New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Council Member Rory Lancman, and Council Member Donovan Richards urging the City Council to hold a hearing on the New York City Police Department’s repeated manipulation of crime stats to undermine the newly enacted bail reforms, reports POLITICO New York.

This request comes after the NYC Defenders released an analysis of data obtained from the New York State Office of Court Administration (OCA) which revealed that docketed cases have plummeted by almost 20 percent throughout the city in the first two months of 2020 as compared with the same period last year. The court case numbers are a more objective measure because each docket represents an instance in which a person has actually been accused of a crime and charged in court. Charged cases face some degree of scrutiny from prosecutors and judges, and thus entirely unfounded charges associated with initial arrests are sometimes weeded out.

The NYC Defenders also analyzed their collective caseload for grand larceny auto, an index crime that the NYPD alleges has skyrocketed almost 65 percent in 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. The Defenders’ collective caseload, however, showed a decrease of 9%.

“The NYPD must explain these significant discrepancies,” the letter reads in part. “As you are all aware, the New York City Police Department does not enter this conversation with an unblemished record. Indeed, the Department has long been known to manipulate its crime statistics up or down to serve its varying purposes.”