And yet the problem continues.
But there are those who believe that the problem is not as pandemic within the profession as reported. Still others resent what they perceive to be a needless stigmatization of CompStat.
“I truly don’t think this whole issue of fudging is anywhere close to being as common as people think,” says Ed Claughton, former police officer and owner of PRI Management Group. “Most of the suspicions and outright beliefs that a department is falsifying stats are the result of a total misunderstanding of how the production of the numbers works and of what the UCR/NIBRS rules state.
“If a structure doesn’t meet the UCR definition of a structure, then it is a theft, not a burglary when someone enters and steals something. If twenty cars are broken into in a parking lot overnight and the four UCR conditional elements are present, (same time frame, same location, same MO and it appears to be same offender), these cases should all be reported as one theft from motor vehicle (not a burglary according to UCR). If someone does a drive-by and the house is unoccupied and the intent of the offender isn’t known, it should be reported as a criminal mischief. And many sexual assault cases have to be reported as inconclusive because victims often refuse to cooperate with the investigation,” he explains.
Claughton’s points have merit, even if they reveal inherent problems with some of the UCR criteria: Would an officer be justified in shooting at a subject he saw firing at a house during what was seemingly a drive-by shooting? Not if the UCR had anything to say about it; certainly not until the intentions of the subjects and the occupancy of the dwelling were made known.
As someone who knows precisely how UCR/NIBRS works, what the rules are, and who has worked in police records as an officer and as a detective and as a supervisor, Claughton finds the situation extremely frustrating.
“Problems with records management systems (RMS) routinely are a large part of the problem. Incorrect code tables and faulty mapping of UCR reportable fields within these systems are common and result in erroneous stats,” he says.
If there is an identifiable villain to be found in the proceedings, Claughton contends that it is the news media.
“It’s completely unfair in its reporting on this topic,” Claughton states. “Nashville PD was accused of cooking the books and lambasted in the news. An audit was conducted (which I worked on) and it was cleared of any wrongdoing. There was a scripting error in RMS leading to over 10,000 cases not being reported electronically as they should have been. Their clearance rate was wrong because they didn’t know the UCR rules on clearing cases.”
Phoenix PD was likewise plastered with allegations of creatively increasing their kidnapping numbers with an eye toward gaining more grant funding.
“Subsequent to a DOJ investigation and an independent panel, they were cleared—but only after the chief lost his job and the department was dragged through the mud. The only outlet to report what really happened was the Phoenix New Times
, which revealed that the allegations came from a disgruntled employee whose life was unraveling and went on a false smear campaign of the department. They had problems with RMS and poor records management quality control procedures, nothing more.”
It is easy to be sympathetic with Claughton’s arguments, particularly if one isn’t feeling defensive on the matter. But there does seem to be a disconnect, and even if the problem is perhaps not as pandemic as some would contend, another argument could be made that one instance is one too many. The real question then, is to what extent the problem is one of conscious deception, or gross misinterpretation. Or both.
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Ironically, there are those critics of CompStat and its ilk that blame the news media for not reporting enough on the problems.
An anonymous Chicago officer observed, “I actually was speaking to someone in the media about how the department kills crime and I was told, ‘Give me the evidence.’ I said, ‘Are you nuts? It is your job to go and request case reports on lost property, trespass, or theft from persons and when you read the narratives, you will see how they should be thefts, burglaries, or robberies.’
“You know what the f**r’s response was? ‘So, I guess you have no evidence, then?’ Unf**king believable how the media does their jobs around here.”
If it’s true that such fudging takes place at all levels, then it is also true that the bad stuff rolls downhill.
Another Chicago cop asserts that, “Anything that keeps us from doing police work is wrong. CompStat keeps us from doing police work, and encourages fudging the numbers.
“I remember when we left roll call and the bad guys had something to worry about. Our front line supervisors were out there with us, not inside massaging some numbers. They understood what we were doing because they were with us, not in the station or at some meeting.
“Now we run from job to job. When we are not handling the radio, we are on some useless mission that only looks good on paper. The Beat guy knows his beat. Give him time to concentrate on the buggers they know. When is the last time you saw a Beat car on a traffic stop? This job is broken.”
Statistical crime reporting plays an important role in contemporary law enforcement, but the data must be accurately reported in order to be completely useful. Once we develop a true and unbiased model for criminal activity, police departments must use that information in a constructive, not punitive, way to proactively fight crime.
Back when I was working the streets for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a wise man once asked me: “If someone shoots a gun on the west side (the most affluent part of Los Angeles) and there are no police to take the report, is it really a crime?” It’s a good question, and an even better one to ask now is: Even if the police took the report, would it show up in the local crime stats or the UCR?
Dean Scoville is the associate editor for Police magazine and a retired patrol supervisor and investigator with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.
