Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Crime stats altered by bosses


From the NY Times:

An anonymous survey of nearly 2,000 retired officers found that the manipulation of crime reports — downgrading crimes to lesser offenses and discouraging victims from filing complaints to make crime statistics look better — has long been part of the culture of the New York Police Department.

The results showed that pressure on officers to artificially reduce crime rates, while simultaneously increasing summonses and the number of people stopped and often frisked on the street, has intensified in the last decade, the two criminologists who conducted the research said in interviews this week.

“I think our survey clearly debunks the Police Department’s rotten-apple theory,” said Eli B. Silverman, one of the criminologists, referring to arguments that very few officers manipulated crime statistics. “This really demonstrates a rotten barrel.”

Dr. Silverman, professor emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and John A. Eterno, a retired New York police captain, provided The New York Times with a nine-page summary of the survey’s preliminary results. After reviewing a copy of the summary, the Police Department impugned the findings on Wednesday. Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, criticized the researchers’ methodology and questioned the reliability of the findings.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

From the NY Times article:

". Dr. Eterno and Dr. Silverman e-mailed a questionnaire to 4,069 former officers who had retired since 1941."

Retired since 1941???? That's over seventy freakin' years ago! I would venture a guess that any officer who retired in the 1940's, and most likely the 1950's, is taking a dirt nap.

Anonymous said...

In other news, the sun rose from the east today, people went to work today, and a car drove up Steinway Street.

Anonymous said...

This only started around '95.......the downside of compstat...........

Anonymous said...

Ahhhh.... I love the smell of cooked books in the morning. What are we going to name after Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg?

Anonymous said...

Did u really think the books weren't cooked? Please.........