Click to watch Mark Greenblatt's 11 News Defenders report

HOUSTON -- When it comes to rivalries, like Dallas versus Houston, numbers can make all the difference.

But what if the score on the board is wrong?

And what if this was no game, but murder?

“That’s very, very disappointing, and unfortunate,” said Phillip Jones, President of the  Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau. He’s talking about the Houston police and how the 11 News Defenders exposed they were undercounting murders.

For example: the case of a baby left next to a Dumpster to die in May of 2006.

The Harris County Medical Examiner called the death a homicide. The Houston Police Department called it a “dead child.”

As a result, Houston never had to count the death on the city’s yearly murder count.

When 11 News first exposed this back in 2007, HPD tried to explain why they were right.

“Leaving a baby by a dumpster may have been with the intent that someone finds him and takes him to the hospital,” HPD Assistant Chief Michael Dirden said.

But now, HPD has quietly reversed course, finally admitting the baby really was murdered.

But why does a Dallas businessman care about uncounted murders in Houston?

It has to do with another rivalry: which city is really the murder capital of our state.

New records we obtained show HPD’s inaccuracies resonate throughout Texas.  

Take 2005, where HPD reported 334 murders officially.

But now? They’re quietly admitting at least four more murders really took place that year — four murders they never reported.

And if they had? The 338 murders that did happen that year would have pushed Houston’s murder rate past Dallas. 

Making it number one for the crime that year

But look at the official books today -- you’d still think Dallas, had the bigger problem that year.

“Shame on them,” Jones said. “If it means the difference between being the murder capital of Texas and not being the murder capital of Texas, that’s significant."

Because he says Dallas may have paid a big price in lost conventions and lost dollars.

“It’s an incredibly competitive business,” Jones said. “Most groups do factor in the crime rate in their decision-making process. If they’re looking at inaccurate information that misrepresents the situation in Dallas versus Houston, that’s unfortunate.”

So what other murders is HPD finally counting now? Over multiple years, the new murders include: Patrick Hansen, who was killed in a robbery; Ronald Willis, run down by a car; and Rogelio Hernandez Lopez, a young child whose death HPD labeled “injury to a child” but now has been changed to capital murder. What’s more?  HPD even has a suspect now, and records they released to 11news show the case has been referred to the district attorney’s office.

All in all, the department has now reclassified 16 deaths as murders, all as a direct result of our investigation.

11 News: “What’s at stake here?”

Larry Lipton: “The credibility of our city.”

Community activist Lipton said normally, he’d defend the cops.

“I am the biggest booster of law enforcement there is,” he said.

In fact, he just won the annual Crime Stoppers award as the top civilian supporter of police.

But even he is disturbed by what the Defenders found.

“Some of the cases that have been misclassified, there was no gray area,” Lipton said. “It was very black and white. One would wonder why this would happen.”

For example, take the now infamous case of Stephen McCoy the Defenders first exposed more than six months ago. He was shot three times in the chest and once in the back of the head, and the Medical Examiner called his death a homicide. 

HPD has since removed the “suicide” label from his death, but still refuses to count his death as a murder.

“It simply doesn’t make sense,” Lipton said. “That ought to have been a murder since the beginning.”

Recently, a guest editorial in the Houston Chronicle called on HPD to have an independent, comprehensive audit of its crime statistics conducted.

HPD Chief Harold Hurtt responded with his own guest editorial, claiming the FBI has checked out and approved HPD’s records from 2007.

The only problem? Out of more than 200,000 incidents that took place in Houston during 2007, the feds looked at just 277 records.

Further, Chief Hurtt claimed to the Chronicle the state had conducted its own audits of HPD as well, writing:  “In fact, the Texas Department of Public Safety has conducted several audits within our Records Division (2001, 2002, 2004 and 2007).”

But the Defenders called DPS to check on that statement. DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange said: “We have not done an audit of their uniform crime reporting program since the year 2000.”

11 News: “So the audits you have done have absolutely nothing to do with crime statistics?

DPS: “That is correct.”

DPS spokeswoman Mange went on to say that the only time DPS has audited Houston crime statistics was back in 1995. A different Houston police chief requested the audit back then. Mange said DPS cannot begin an audit on its own - stressing that HPD would have to request an audit for the process to begin.  

Mage also said any audit DPS would do would be much more comprehensive than an FBI "review."

DPS is the state agency in Texas that oversees statistics reported by local agencies  to the federal Uniform Crime Reporting program which is run by the FBI.