Yeah, I've actually seen this happen enough times that I believe it's more common than people think. I don't have statistics, but I've noticed multiple people die under mysterious circumstances (including a close friend) and they were usually ruled a suicide, even when the family objected.

Example: Where I grew up if you didnt die within 24hrs or being shot it was not considered a murder, the gorvernment changed the way the statistic measures murders many years ago to lower the ‘murder’ rate.

Edit to add this link with the murder rates: https://www.statista.com/statistics/984823/homicide-rate-pue...

Have you considered getting in touch with an investigative journalist?

Well, that's a "technically" while still missing the point. It is much more difficult to meaningfully shift murder rate numbers via mass mis-reporting, compared to other statistics.

I don’t think you’ve meaningfully proved that claim. The point was that you can, in fact, quite easily game stats even for murder. I’ll add this[1] as another example.

[1] - https://www.vox.com/world/2015/12/13/9989250/japan-crime-con...

To steelman this argument, I'd say it's hard to hide "excess deaths" across all causes lumped together. Although during covid we probably even managed to do that by reducing miles driven and presumably # of road deaths.

Brazilian police: Hold my bear.