Chicago “Massaged” Crime Data to Lower Homicide Rate

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The Truth About Chicago’s Crime Rates

Chicago Magazine conducted a 12-month examination of the Chicago Police Department’s crime statistics going back several years.  They found people who were beaten, burned, suffocated, or shot to death in 2013 and whose cases were reclassified as death investigations, downgraded to more minor crimes, or even closed as noncriminal incidents—all for illogical or, at best, unclear reasons.

Many officers of different ranks and from different parts of the city recounted instances in which they were asked or pressured by their superiors to reclassify their incident reports or in which their reports were changed by some invisible hand. One detective refers to the “magic ink”: the power to make a case disappear. Says another: “The rank and file don’t agree with what’s going on. The powers that be are making the changes.”

Sources describe a practice that has become widespread at the same time that top police brass have become fixated on demonstrating improvement in Chicago’s woeful crime statistics."



Aside from homicides, which soared in 2012, the drop in crime since Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy arrived in May 2011 is unprecedented—and, some of his detractors say, unbelievable. Crime hasn’t just fallen, it has freefallen: across the city and across all major categories.

According to police figures, the number of index crimes, the crimes all U.S. cities supply to the FBI for its Uniform Crime Report, plunged by 56 percent citywide from 2010 to 2013—an average of nearly 19 percent per year—a reduction that borders on the miraculous. To put these numbers in perspective: From 1993, when index crimes peaked, to 2010, the last full year under McCarthy’s predecessor, Jody Weis, the average annual decline was less than 4 percent.

This dramatic crime reduction has been happening even as the department has been bleeding officers. (A recent Tribune analysis listed 7,078 beat cops on the streets, 10 percent fewer than in 2011.) Given these facts, the crime reduction “makes no sense,” says one veteran sergeant. “And it makes absolutely no sense that people believe it. Yet people believe it.”

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2014/Chicago-crime-rates/

Chicago Police underreported number of 2012 aggravated assault and battery, audit finds

http://www.suntimes.com/26693217-761/chicago-police-underreported-number-of-2012-aggravated-assault-and-battery-audit-finds.html

[gryphon]

So did New York under Bloomberg.

The practice of manufacturing artificially low crime rates increased substantially after 2002 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his police commissioner Raymond Kelly. New research based on interviews with 2,000 retired police officers from the NYPD reveals pervasive, system-wide corruption of criminal records and police practices. This research suggests that concern with the department's reputation for reducing crime, much more than with public safety, drives police policy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eli-b-silverman/low-crime-rates-nypd-eli-b-silverman-john-a-eterno_b_1772489.html

[SD40VE]

thats messed, up people think the city is "safer" when in reality its just as bad if not worse. and the public doesnt know because of these false numbers