PATERSON – Officer in Charge Isa Abbassi today announced updates and improvements to the Paterson Police Department’s data reporting and the weekly CompStat crime report.
In October 2023, PPD began posting weekly CompStat reports to the department’s website so the public can be informed of the latest crime data in the city and keep track of the progress being made under Officer in Charge Abbassi’s leadership to reduce crime in Paterson. CompStat is a performance management system that is used to reduce crime and achieve other police department goals. CompStat emphasizes information-sharing, responsibility and accountability, and is being used by the PPD to improve the effectiveness of the department. PPD believes sharing crime data with the public increases transparency in government and promotes the public’s trust in the PPD as it carries out its shared public safety mission.
During an internal review of practices and data recordkeeping at the Paterson Police Department, it was discovered that certain complaints of violations of the New Jersey theft statute (N.J.S.A. 2C:20-3) were being incorrectly classified in the records management system as non-theft crimes when summary reports, like those for CompStat, were run. This error in classifying, and thus counting, certain theft crimes in summary reports had occurred since 2021 when a new records management system was adopted by the PPD.
Accordingly, the Paterson Police Department has updated the recordkeeping system to correct this error. With this correction, the CompStat report has been updated to reflect that there were 2,523 theft complaints in 2022, not 1,917, as previously reported. Additionally, the 2023 year-to-date numbers have been corrected to reflect that there have been 2,202 theft complaints year-to-date, not 1,834. Using the correct numbers, thefts in Paterson have decreased on a year-to-date basis for week 48 of the year from 2,359 in 2022 to 2,202 in 2023, a decrease of 6.7%.
The corrected numbers are reflected in the report released today for the week ending December 3, 2023.
The improvement to crime data analysis will allow the department to more accurately track crime patterns and compare data sets with previous years.
Additionally, the following improvements to the department’s CompStat report will be implemented starting with the first CompStat report in 2024:
- Reporting of arrest data with prior year comparison;
- Publication of shooting incident data by ward with prior year comparison; and
- Public reporting of simple assault, and disorderly persons theft data as separate crime categories.
Violent crime data, including shootings, aggravated assaults and robberies, was not affected by this data management system error. Likewise, auto theft data was not affected. The City of Paterson is still experiencing double-digit declines in all violent crime reporting data categories following violence suppression efforts by the Paterson Police Department and other initiatives laid out in Officer in Charge Abbassi’s Strategic Plan for the department.
