Jersey City claims it's winning the war on crime.

That's according to Mayor Steve Fulop today touting the city's accomplishments alongside public safety officials and the state's attorney general announcing the monumental decreases in violent crime for 2023, including the lowest homicide rate in the city's history.

And that's not just at a state level.

It's on a national one, as the city's homicide rate is now amongst the lowest of largest 100 cities in the United States.

Still, there's just one problem, as senior political correspondent David Cruz reports, the data isn't available to the public.

This is supposed to be Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop Public Safety Week.

Tomorrow, the mayor, who you may know is also a candidate for governor, will wear his candidate's hat to outline his public safety ideas to voters.

Today, he was the mayor reporting to residents about the city's crime rate, which he says is down, starting with homicides.

To see a steady trend downwards from the mid-twenties to this year.

It's actually, unfortunately we had a homicide this weekend, a stabbing.

So that number is actually ten, but it still represents the lowest homicide rate that the city has ever seen since records have been kept.

Despite some minor statistical upticks in robberies and aggravated assaults, the mayor says his administration's multi-pronged approach of enforcement detective work and partnerships are getting results.

That's something US attorney Phil Sellinger was on hand to reiterate.

Every homicide and since the shooting is a tragedy and it's one between many, but these are harder reductions.

And all of us, as well as our partners who are not here today, the Office, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, FBI and many other.

Federal agencies are working very hard to keep people.

Safe.

Officials here are actually much more excited than the U.S. attorney's understated delivery might suggest.

This is great news, says the mayor.

But this is also an administration that has played a bit of hot potato with statistics, keeping them off local sites and saying they report them to the state, which is supposed to post them on state sites.

But those numbers haven't been updated since 2020.

So officials admit you're going to have to take their word for it.

But we posted at the end of the year like we post over other data and we submit it as the state request.

So I don't know what the information is that you want on a weekly basis in Monticello Avenue, but we think we provide the information like we do everything else where people can see what's happening from year to year in the progress.

That's making it important to go back to what I said.

Crime is not decrease in a straight line.

It's up and down by week.

And we think this gives you the best picture overall for what crime looks like in Jersey City.

But the public can't vet the information that the city.

Reports to the state.

I'm just saying, no, they can't they can't do anything because those reports, there's a lot of confidential information of victims names, sex crime victims, juveniles.

We can't just post everything on there but we never have.

Neither has anyone else.

The only thing I'm going to add to that is I have stood up here when crime was up.

So anybody who was insinuating that like, oh, I'm making crime go down, I have stood up here when crime was up in almost every category.

And I've explained why.

And in addition, I've been here for 11 years and I'm waiting for the first person to produce a crime that was not reported correctly, recorded correctly and sent to the state.

The federal government.

Correct.

So I'm confident with these numbers.

Crime stats are complicated.

One victim of crime represents everyone in the community, and when the victim is an 18 year old like the one who was killed last week, statistics no matter how encouraging they look on paper, don't tell the whole story.

I'm David Cruz, NJ Spotlight News.