Matthews Police correct misreported 2018-2022 crime stats

Earlier in January, the town of Matthews said crime statistics reported by the Matthews Police Department from 2018-2022 were incorrectly reported. Now, the town has released updated numbers.

After an eight-month internal investigation that ended in December, on Monday the town of Matthews published the corrected case closure rates from 2020-2022 and crime reports from 2018-2022.

Crime & Justice

RELATED: Matthews Police deliberately misreported some crime stats, town says

Kenneth Lee Jr.

"The corrected case closure rates continue to demonstrate excellent work performed by Matthews police officers and investigators on an ongoing basis,” said town manager Becky Hawke, in a statement

Before the correction of stats, Hawke said MPD officers were put under pressure to make their case closure rates higher to make the department's efforts look better.

Now that the audit has occurred, here’s a brief look at what statistics changed:

• From 2020-2022, case clearance rates for the Matthews Police Department ranged from 31-37% across all categories.
  
• Previously-published information inaccurately utilized a case disposition category called "closed by other means" and listed closed and cleared case rates as high as 75%. In effect, that made it look like Matthews Police were solving more than twice as many crimes as they were.
  
• For comparison, case closure rates in the Southeast for violent crimes averaged 42.8% in 2019. Closure rates for property crimes averaged 17.8%, for a combined total closure rate of 18.3%, Matthews said.

For crime rate reporting, all cases from 2018–2022 were reviewed to make sure they were up to the FBI National Incident-Based Reporting System Standards. This led to small adjustments of the number of reported crimes within categories like assault, burglary, destruction of properties, larceny and robberies.

"Matthews was and is a safe community," Hawke said. "The corrections made to crime numbers have little impact on each category." She said previously that officers who were involved were disciplined or were no longer with the department, but would not provide any details.

You can view the full list of updated MPD statshere.