@matrix "reports of major crime dropped during the slowdown period."
If you assume that police arrests are the bottleneck (ie, that for 100 reports, police can only, and were, arresting 80 people as a result), then it's entirely possible that crime went down, only 90 reports were made consequently, and the police still only could make 80 arrests.
I agree it's a poorly set up article, but your cherrypicking quotes is just as dumb.
@matrix the argument they make is that if the calls reporting crime dropped, crime (probably) dropped. There were less reports to even investigate.
If there is a strong link between peoples willingness to report crime and a publicised police slowdown, that would be interesting, but given peoples propensity to call 911 over the most trivial shit, I would pause to make such a connection at first blush.