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Crime Stats Redux: You Read it here First!
From ProJo:
An investigative report last month by ABC6 News, citing dozens of unnamed police officers as sources, alleged that police administrators and subordinates classified and reclassified crimes in such a way as to understate the crime rate.
In a post of July 21, 2005, The Big Lie of Crime Stats I called into question the Crime Stats of the Providence Police Department under Col. Esserman.
Now it seems that the chickens have come how to roost. Even the FOB, The Fraternal Order of Police, the police union, is calling into question Col Esserman's handling of the crime stats for the City of Providence. Claims have been made that the Chief has ordered the stats fudged in order to make them look better than they are, because he is a political animal and he is in cahoots with the mayor, a politically ambitious animal, who will never get another vote from me, btw.
Read the Projo article for more info:
Providence police union seeks probe of crime data
01:00 AM EDT on Friday, April 4, 2008
By Gregory Smith
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — Mayor David N. Cicilline and Police Chief Dean M. Esserman have been boasting for years of a dramatic decline in the crime rate. Crime is at a 30-year low, they claim.
But are the figures trustworthy? For quite a while members of the Police Department have been tussling privately over that issue, disagreeing whether some crime reports are unjustifiably dismissed or reclassified to make the crime rate look better.
Two years ago some members of the City Council said they were concerned that the crime decline was exaggerated, but an investigation never materialized.
Now the police labor union, the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge No. 3, is calling for an independent inquiry to settle the matter.
Esserman, who champions the use of data to improve police performance and accountability, publicly said yesterday that he supports the call. He has insisted that the department’s published crime statistics are reliable.
The FOP two weeks ago sent a letter to Tammie M. Gregg, deputy chief of the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, asking what her department knows about Providence police crime statistics.
The FOP also asked, as an extension of the Justice Department’s recently closed civil-rights review of the police force, to look into the integrity of Providence’s statistical reporting of crime.
A recent televised investigative report by ABC6 News prompted FOP members to ask for an independent inquiry and for the FOP executive board, in turn, to ask the Justice Department for help, according to the letter. ABC6 News, citing dozens of unnamed police officers as sources, alleged that police administrators and subordinates reclassified crimes as lesser crimes, allowing the department to report an artificially rosy picture of crime in Providence.
Lt. Kenneth M. Cohen, FOP president, yesterday acknowledged that the letter was sent. He said he would not mind if the Justice Department delegates to the Federal Bureau of Investigation the task of auditing the crime statistics. Police departments by law are required to report their crime experience to the FBI in an FBI-mandated format.
Cohen said the FOP’s action was prompted by a member who brought it up at a membership meeting.
“It was one of the members who was indirectly accused of, for lack of a better term, fudging the numbers,” Cohen said. “[He] felt that his reputation and his integrity was being impugned by [the ABC6 report], and that the only way to get out from under it” would be an independent inquiry.
gsmith@projo.com
Posted at May 7, 2008 02:49 AM