MATTHEWS, N.C. — An internal probe revealed the Matthews Police Department had been incorrectly reporting crime stats for the past four years.
Matthews town manager Becky Hawke, who became town manager in 2022 after serving as assistant town manager since 2016, initiated the eight-month-long investigation after officers raised concerns.
The review found between 2018 and 2022, police felt pressured to label some cases as "closed by other means," making it look like the department was closing up to 75% of its cases -- a much greater percentage than comparable departments in the Southeast.
Hawke said while the necessary changes may be minor, it's still important to fix the errors.
"Maybe something was listed as a larceny, and it should have been a shoplifting," Hawke said. "So no major changes with that. What we're really looking at is the case closure rates, and making sure that we get those corrected things, categorized properly."
The investigation came last summer, right before former Police Chief Clark Pennington resigned. Hawke said Pennington's resignation was so he could retire from law enforcement and pursue another opportunity.
Hawke said the police department doesn't have any monetary incentives to inflate crime stats, and nothing about the corrected stats changes the safety of Matthews.
"The men and women of the Matthews Police Department, they're doing great work, they've been doing great work, we want our community to believe in them, to trust in them, because they absolutely deserve it," Hawke said. "And nothing about this changes that."
The police department plans to use a new computer software to help fix the problem.
Note: A previous version of this article said 2011 instead of 2022. The error has been corrected.