Read this report by a group strongly incentivized to and rewarded by a creation of the perception that crime is high, about how high you should perceive crime to be.
When you learned how to use primary sources did they teach you to take them at face value without any consideration of the purpose, goals, constraints, and motivations of the people who created them?
I'm curious what other source you would even reference in this situation? Also do you really think the police intentionally misreport numbers that make themselves look bad?
I doubt there's a single trustworthy authoritative source that presents a complete picture. I'm not saying completely ignore or dismiss what the police say, but consider it in its context as one piece of information, published by an organization with its own needs and biases, rather than the single defining instance.
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?
