Crime is Up and Down
An interesting article by a retired CPD lieutenant about how crime numbers have been manipulated in the past and how he suspects they are being manipulated now:
- During my 33 years as a Chicago Police Officer, one of the things I learned is that numbers play an important role in law enforcement. The biggest lesson was that numbers don't lie but some people lie about numbers.
Here in Chicago, we hear about numbers almost on a daily basis as they relate to crime here in our city. Over the years on the job, I have served nine police superintendents, and each one had a different way of releasing numbers to the public. Through those years I have seen numbers inflated, ignored, exaggerated, manipulated, deflated and, yes, even made up.
However, as the press in our city became more and more probing with highly skilled investigative reporters who were armed with "freedom of information requests," a new way of handling police statistics and numbers gave way to creativity.
Creativity is another name for "CompStat," a wholly political operation to give the illusion of crime reduction in the face of almost certain increases.
Labels: stats
posted by SCC at 12:05 AM
11 Comments:
Is that you bananas?
Nobody bothers many reports anymore. Even the cops who show up usually try to talk you out of making a report. Everything west of Harlem get "no" service.
He's right on with his analysis. That is what was behind McStreetlight (Take that Bill!)using the term "murder" instead of "homicide". By counting only murders, you can skip the classifications of Justifiable, Manslaughter, and Reckless. It truly is about smoke & mirrors.
The retired lieutenant is a master of the obvious.
I cant believe there are no comments on this. When I worked as a Det' in Area busy-2 it was routine that we read case reports that reported an index crime but were titled as lost property, or damage to property, or trespass or a lesser theft, theft from building. District Commanders routinely called Area Sgts & Dets' about their numbers, cant this or that be reclassified. Not only this but I commented more than once to the "FOP" personnel that vistied the area that reducing crime has one major effect "IT REDUCES THE NEED FOR POLICE OFFICERS WHEN THE CITY CAN POST NUMBERS THAT SAY CRIME IS DOWN". Secondarily but equally it creates an unsafe work enviroment when fewer officers are available to answer calls for service and equally important is that a lesser presence on the street is known by the criminal element, when they commit a crime and no police respond (call back) they commit another crime full well knowing the po po aint coming. Last but not least is the fact that fewer employees mean lesser contributions to our pension fund by both sides.
Who is the sergeant that went to a local strip joint and got called out for using Xerox copies of dollar bills that he was stuffing in the girls garter belts? Real class act.
Chicago' Vanishing middle class- cool graphic.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/04/03/amazing-graphic-shows-chicagos-middle-class-disappear-before-your-eyes/
Figures don't lie, but liars figure.
Who is the sergeant that went to a local strip joint and got called out for using Xerox copies of dollar bills that he was stuffing in the girls garter belts? Real class act.
4/03/2014 02:24:00 PM
LMAO!
Whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests, but on the lack of crime. Robert Peel
Anonymous said...
Whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests, but on the lack of crime. Robert Peel
4/03/2014 09:08:00 PM
The writing of Sir Robert Peel, the father of modern policing, was never read by the CPD brass. Peel talks about control of disorder. That's something that cannot be tabulated on graphs or tables so there are no statistics to report.
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