CRIME FIGHTING ROBOTS

The Post reported Monday that Thomas Manzolillo, a commanding officer at the 105th precinct in Queens, was transferred and demoted after it was discovered he'd been fudging crime statistics to make it look like he was doing a bang-up job. Not only did he reclassify felonies as lesser crimes-he went into CompStat (the NYPD's computer system which tracks such things) and increased the crime rate in his precinct before his arrival in 2004. So is this news? CompStat's numbers are used to determine promotions and raises. Crime goes down in your precinct, you get rewarded. It was no real surprise, then, when in 1996, while Giuliani was touting the miraculous drop in the city's crime rate, it was first revealed that precinct commanders were regularly doing what Manzolillo did. Number fudging began almost the moment CompStat was up and running.

There were a few token demotions and transfers (like Manzolillo) but nearly every officer who's been held up as a bad example has claimed the practice is widespread, affecting nearly every precinct in the city. It's how they keep their jobs. Point being, next time you're told the crime rate has reached a new all-time low, consider it a nice gesture, but little more.