by James A. Bacon
The incidence of violent crime increased 1.2% nationally in 2012 over the previous year, according to the latest Department of Justice Uniform Crime Report, but declined somewhat in Virginia’s most populous cities, as seen in the chart above. That appears to be good news, at least for Virginia.
Sadly, questions are arising as to the legitimacy of the national numbers, which are only as good as the numbers provided by local law enforcement authorities. Driven by political considerations, police departments in some localities may be under-reporting violent crimes. Just to pick a couple of examples that I stumbled across in the last month or so:
The Titan of Trinidad, a Washington, D.C., blog reports:
Last week, we reported on the violent assault on the Metropolitan Branch Trail, in which a mob of 15 persons attacked a bicyclist without provocation, beating him so severely that his eye was swollen shut. Over the next two days, we also noticed this crime went unmentioned in MPD’s public crime reports and online crime map, and wondered why. … Shockingly, not only does the DC Metropolitan Police freely admit hiding a significant number of crime statistics from the public, but double-down on that position by saying they do so for our own own good.
Then comes Jack Cashill, a writer with the conservative WND website, writing about the trial of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin. While the media has focused on murder trial, Cashill draws attention to the manipulation of crime data by the Mount Carmel Police Department that under-played Martin’s run-ins with the law.
On Feb. 15, 2012, 11 days before Martin’s death, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools put out a press release boasting of a 60 percent decline in school-based arrests, the largest decline by far in the state. … [Mount Carmel Police Chief Charles] Hurley’s detectives, all of them veterans with excellent records, told a different story under oath when questioned by Internal Affairs. …
“Oh, God, oh, my God, oh, God,” one major reportedly said when first looking at Martin’s data. He realized that Martin had been suspended twice already that school year for offenses that should have gotten him arrested – once for getting caught with a burglary tool and a dozen items of female jewelry, the second time for getting caught with marijuana and a marijuana pipe.
In each case, the case file on Martin was fudged to make the crime less serious than it was. As one detective told IA, the arrest statistics coming out of Martin’s school, Michael Krop Senior, had been “quite high,” and the detectives “needed to find some way to lower the stats.” This directive allegedly came from Hurley.
“Chief Hurley, for the past year, has been telling his command staff to lower the arrest rates,” confirmed another high-ranking detective.
We live in an age in which lying and cheating are endemic, even among pillars of the establishment — from police officials to the Atlanta teachers on trial for fixing student test scores. There is intense political pressure to show progress in the fight against crime. Should we be surprised to find that some local police officials manipulate the data?
Here in Virginia, the City of Richmond has fired senior social services administrators for gross incompetence and negligence. A recent city review cited, among other failures, the lack of “a comprehensive records management system.” Would it shock anyone if they had cooked the numbers relating to child protective services?
If anyone knows of any instances regarding the mis-reporting of crime data in Virginia, please let me know.
