Some fairly large changes between 2001 and the present will be seen in certain categories of the data presented in these reports. These include total incidents and dispatched calls (both down about 14-15 percent), as well as patrol- or department-generated incidents, domestic-based incidents of a non-violent nature, and several categories pertaining to vehicles, traffic, and alarms.

      Most of the decline in total incidents and the various ways they are generated pertain to policy, procedural, and legal changes regarding the kinds of matters that are recorded as incidents. The reader of incident statistics reports should be aware that police officers provide numerous services to citizens, including various activities which help ensure public safety, during the course of a shift which do not constitute incidents.

      Among the categories showing substantial change caused largely by such changes are:

• general assistance to citizens no longer registered as incidents;


• abandoned motor vehicles on city streets, now handled by a new City program through the Department of Public Works, involving police in only a small percentage of cases (resulting in much of the observed 56% decline citywide in the category "MV Diab/Obstr/Aban, Pkg Vio");
  
• complaints regarding failure to clear snow from sidewalks, also now handled by the Department of Public Works.

      Other significant changes since 2001 (based on citywide comparison) include (1) a large increase in total domestic-related incidents (but not cases of violent assault), attributable to enhanced procedures for identifying incidents having a basis in domestic relations but not being of a violent nature; (2) a decline of about 25 percent in reported traffic accidents (citywide); and (3) a decline of about 17 percent in false alarms.

      While changes will be observed in the numbers of various kinds of crimes, these categories are, with few exceptions, not where the policy-related changes have occurred. Exceptions include fraud, where a significant increase is due in large part to enhanced procedures for discerning the distinction between fraud and larceny, and home invasions/carjackings, where a major increase relates more to classification and interpretation than to any real increase in such criminal acts.