NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- The number of crimes in New Haven last year was 12 percent higher than originally reported, officials said, because the police department was eight years behind on its record-keeping.

New Haven residents’ opinions were split on Tuesday when asked if they thought crime in the city was up or down.

“Absolutely not,” resident Robin Parker said. “All you hear is sirens, sirens, sirens.”

“It's down because you don't hear about as much murders and rapes,” resident Latonya Roberts said.

New Haven police were unsure as well because there records weren’t up to date. They said their department had been hit hard by layoffs, so it hadn’t been able to report its crime statistics in full to the FBI.

Because its records weren’t up to date, they said, the department lost out on a lot of money.

“When we got one of the grants, for instance, Hartford got triple the money we got, almost four times,” New Haven Police Chief James Lewis said.

That’s when Records Supervisor Donna Dinello and her staff cracked down.

“Probably for six months I've been working on just strictly the audit, she said.

The audit found that the department was missing close to 1,200 crimes in 2008 alone.

According to the audit, some numbers, such as murders in 2008, didn’t go up.

But it showed that the department had under-reported about 200 robberies and was missing close to 400 aggravated assaults.

Dinello said the reason for the numbers being so far off rests in the 911 dispatch center.

Say someone calls in to report their car has been stolen, Dinello said. When police investigate, she said, they may realize it was a car-jacking, which makes it a robbery and a violent crime.

She said the crime analysis unit was going off of those 911 records and not off of the audited police report records.

Lewis said up-to-date records help him figure out how to best utilize his manpower, and that New Haven will now eligible for more federal dollars, which will go right back to the city.

“More equipment, a patrol fleet,” he said. “If we had gotten all the money we should have gotten last year, we'd have probably put cameras in the patrol vehicles.”

Dinello said the Records Department is still getting caught up on the 2009 records. She said those records are expected to be up to date within a month.