> The city has incentive to hide the actual numbers...

... and cops have an incentive to overstate them.

Not really - as the article says, the cops are discouraged and it's not like there's a bounty per arrest. Overstating the numbers is a waste of time not accomplishing anything if true.

Cops outright make shit up to win political points.

For example: https://www.businessinsider.com/nypds-shake-shack-hoax-stop-...

So some cops lied in New York about something unrelated... so they must be lying about well-documented phenomena in Los Angeles over an entirely different issue. Not only that, but they must be somehow incentivized to do so.

I don't find that argument convincing.

Oh, LA's cops have bigger issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs

There's a grim and extensive investigation at https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history... of this.

Property crimes generally aren't reported by the police so it's not something the police could fudge. Now arrest rates they may lie about (read: arrest innocent people) to meet quotas.

Do they? More crimes means a lower solved crime rate, which looks reflects poorly on the city's leadership.

Police unions are frequently feuding with city leadership.

As an example, the NYPD doxxed DiBlasio's daughter in revenge for his position on the George Floyd murder: https://www.newsweek.com/nypd-sergeants-benevolent-associati...

Overstating/cherrypicking crimes is a frequently utilized PR tactic to fight attempts at police reform, budget cuts, etc.

But the police in NYC used lots of spotsearches to boost both the crime rate (they discovered and so "solved" the crime at the same time) AND their crimes solved rate simultaneously. (Until the courts stopped them.) Only if both those stats go up together are the police incentivized to boost the crime rate.

That's why you pick specific stats that support your point, while pretending the others don't exist. Any time you see an oddly specific stat, you should question it a little.

For example: https://twitter.com/dceiver/status/1493643563892150278

"Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year" winds up describing going from one to six.

Aren't most stores insured, and if so wouldn't this data be available due to insurance claims?

Businesses don't file insurance claims when the losses are too small to justify paying the insurance premium, plus taking the time to file a police report and insurance report. Also, the losses are so frequent that they add up quickly - and the amount of effort required to file reports and claims for all of them is not economically viable.