See, that's the thing about crime stats: they only tell you successful convictions. They do not factor in police inactivity, people not reporting, police not filing, plea bargains to misdemeanors, DAs not prosecuting, cases getting dismissed.

Homicides however mean a cadaver is involved, and that can't be policy-washed: it is there in the morgue on file with the medical examiner.

Homicides are included. If you had kept reading you would've seen that the next sentence is:

> Homicides reflect the number of victims and are not based on the incidents.

It appears that homicides have generally been below, and haven't risen above, 2017 levels.

> See, that's the thing about crime stats: they only tell you successful convictions.

It's not mentioned specifically but it's implied that these are reported incidents rather than convictions:

> Incidents that are unfounded or unsubstantiated have also been excluded from the dataset.

My car was broken into 3 times in 10 years. I reported it once because “what difference does it make?”