3,200 Jersey City Police Cases Were Not Entered Properly Into Crime Database, Audit Finds

JERSEY CITY, NJ — Jersey City on Thursday released an internal audit that found at least 3,251 police cases between 2021 and 2024 were not properly entered into the National Incident-Based Reporting System, known as NIBRS.

The review was conducted under the direction of Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose and covered reporting during the previous mayoral administration, the city said in a press release on Tuesday morning.

The city expects to launch a public dashboard showing up-to-date crime and safety metrics in coming weeks, officials said.

In the past, that data was here.

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The audit found that the majority of the 3,251 cases that were not properly entered involved lower-level offenses, while crimes such as homicide were reported accurately throughout the period.

According to the city, the gaps were tied to fragmented workflows, inconsistent tracking, inaccurate initial incident coding and failures to update offense classifications when supplemental reports changed the facts of a case.

"Transparency is only meaningful if the data behind it is trustworthy," said Mayor James Solomon, who took office in January. "And a new era of public safety transparency can only happen if we are honest and accurate about past statistics. Jersey City residents deserve accurate information, and we're committed to fixing and building systems that deliver it."

The city said pre-2025 crime figures should not be used as a benchmark for evaluating future crime trends.

To address the problems identified in the audit, Ambrose has invited the New Jersey State Police to conduct an on-site review of Jersey City Police Department reporting workflows and processes.

Acting on their recommendations, the department is assigning additional personnel to NIBRS-related work, implementing refresher training on incident scoring, coding and reporting, evaluating upgrades to its computer-aided dispatch and records management systems, and strengthening supervisory review so reportable incidents are consistently identified and submitted.

The audit is part of the Solomon administration's JC IMPACT initiative, which the city said is intended to bring data-driven accountability to public safety operations.