Despite an FBI study that shows many former police officers were pressure to fudge crime statistics, Mayor Bloomberg insists that nobody is trying to hide anything nowadays. He said on his radio show, "No. You know, it's, in this day and age, I love this, gonna cook the books. With the press talking all the time, with everybody having Twitter and Facebook and everything, do you really think you could keep anything private anymore? C'mon." Twitter: Keeping cops honest since 2006.

The FBI study also includes data from the city's hospitals. Though the NYPD reports that felony assaults have decreased over the past decade, the Department of Health says the number of people admitted to city hospitals for assault has nearly doubled over the same period. Though the numbers are tough to compare, researcher John A. Eterno told the Times the data does point to even more falsified numbers. He said, "Emergency room visits are not going to happen just because somebody needs a Band-Aid. Somebody is going to go there because they’ve been seriously assaulted.”

Bloomberg also insisted that whatever pressure is there to keep crime down will remain, book cooking or not. But is there pressure on the individual police officer or sergeant, lieutenant, captain, inspector, chief, to bring crime down? Enormous, and it's going to be more. We are not going to tolerate crime. Period....But they're not cooking the books." For what it's worth, the latest crime statistics show murder is up 16.4% this year, rape is up 15.2% and felony assault is up 0.4%. Overall crime is down 1.42%.