sions, an offender will confess to a crime to which he has not been arrested for and sometimes over exaggerating the original facts. The officer would create a report putting the over exaggerated crime(s) on it. After an investigation, the offender was found to be lying about the crime he/she had committed yet the data has already been submitted and no changes are made to the submitted statistics. There are some geographic areas in the community that are less inclined to report a crime when it happens. In lower income areas, residents do not report crimes as often because of fear of retaliation and not wanting the "bad guys" to label them as being informants to the police. In higher income areas, almost every crime is reported. Due to the fact that crime statistics are based on what is actually reported to the police department this makes the statistical information very misleading and often unreliable. Police departments often implement new policies, procedures and programs. Upon an agency implementing a new program such as Community Oriented Policing (COP), where the officers spend more time becoming involved in the community, information regarding criminal activity is given to the police more frequently. COP is when police officers and private citizens work together with the intention of restoring the neighborhood. Officers are readily available to take complaints by consistently being in the same area. The intention of COP is to clean up the neighborhood with the help of the residents and to regain the citizen's trust in the police department. In this program, most of the officer's shift is spent on the street walking a beat or on bicycle patrol within a certain area of assignment. Once the relationship between the police and the public shows improvement the, officers tend to generate more reports and arrests thereby creating a substantial rise in the statistical data. Another program called proactive policing has created a major ri...
