Jersey City Mayor James Solomon and his predecessor, Steven Fulop, are bareknuckle boxing this morning over alleged improper city crime reporting that occurred under the latter’s watch.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
Solomon today said findings of an internal audit of Jersey City Police Department crime data reporting that found at least 3,251 criminal cases between 2021 to 2024 were not properly entered into the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
The audit attributed the gaps 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. 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,” Solomon said in a statement.
The 2025 data is up-to-date, and the administration will use 2025 data only as a baseline moving forward, Solomon’s office added.
Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose, who oversaw the audit, invited the New Jersey State Police (NJSP) to conduct an on-site review of JCPD’s reporting workflows and processes.
As a result, Jersey City police are now implementing refresher training on incident scoring, coding, and reporting; evaluating upgrades to its CAD/RMS (computer-aided dispatch and records management) systems to improve routing accuracy and supplemental report capture; and strengthening supervisory review, among other things.
“These findings reflect issues that built up over years. What matters now is that we’ve identified the problems, we’ve brought in experts to help us fix them, and we’re putting the right systems and staffing in place to get this right going forward,” noted Ambrose.
“The people deserve transparent, accurate information about the safety of their city and we are going to provide that to them.”
The audit is part of the Solomon administration’s broader JC IMPACT initiative, which aims to bring data-driven accountability to public safety operations.
A public dashboard displaying up-to-date crime and safety metrics is expected to launch in the coming weeks, built on the improved reporting infrastructure now being put in place.
Fulop, now the president and CEO of Partnership for New York City who has largely not publicly responded to Solomon’s criticisms of his administration, didn’t hold back this time.
“What we’ve seen over the last six months is what happens when a mayor has no agenda of his own. Mayor Solomon has a strange obsession with my tenure, one he was completely silent about despite sitting on the City Council for eight years while all of this allegedly occurred,” he declared.
“That silence leaves only two explanations: either he was asleep on the job as a councilman, or this didn’t happen the way he’s now claiming. Six months in, his administration’s greatest hits are rebranding my accomplishments, issuing press releases about paperwork, and lobbying to change the rules so his out-of-town director team won’t be held accountable on a budget or on crime statistics.”
Fulop added that violent crime was reported accurately throughout his 12-year tenure, claiming that Solomon simply found “entry gaps in a federal system” which is “a manufactured problem.”
Back in December 2024, Fulop and then-Public Safety Director James Shea held a press conference touting declining homicides and shootings, also acknowledging that thefts and assaults were up, as HCV first reported.
At the time, Shea explained why the city was switching to NIBRS reporting, which Fulop noted was rapidly replacing CompStat and uniform crime reporting (UCR).
“The NIBRS system is much more granular, much more involved, captures a lot more detail about the crimes that are occurring and is now the required throughout the country,” Shea said back then.
“So, with a lot of work, we had to increase our unit that does our CrimeStat reporting from two to seven, and we had to put a lot of overtime into it, but with a lot of work, in January of this year we were able to switch to the NIBRS system.”
Solomon has been bringing the fight to Fulop within about three weeks of being sworn in this year, beginning with an explosive press conference where he attributed an over quarter billion budget deficit to financial mismanagement by the prior administration.
While Fulop has not put a number of what he thinks the current deficit is, he has said Solomon’s figures are “fugazi,” pointing to the fact that the city’s application for transitional aid is only $150 million.
Steve who? He spent the last 2 years of his term running for governor and after crashing and burning in the primary, he could not look to get out of JC fast enough.
Now he fronts for billionaires against a true progressive mayor for a million dollar salary.
Why should he care about a city and state where he’s no longer even a resident?
He IS a resident of NYC now, right?
Stay in your lane, Steve.