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Chris McDaniel's avatar

under UCR, only the most severe crime gets reported. so for instance, if someone broke into a home, raped the homeowner, murdered them, stole their car and fled. it would be counted as a murder. there's all kinds of weird rules for counting up crimes in it. I used to compile some of the stats.

the bigger prob with UCR is the "safe cities" that prize their low crime rep. so... sometimes a robbery is looked at and it's decided that maybe it was a misdemeanor assault and a theft. theft looks better on crime stats than robbery. burglary maybe it's a property damage (part 2 crime) and a theft. you can see how a mayor or a chief could decide that's the best course of action.

NIBRS is intended to fill the gaps by counting crimes and incidents. but, as you said, requires training and tech upgrades.

short staffing is tough. when I was on the job, we patrolled a very rough city one summer. on my midnight shift, often it was just two of us. this has been years ago, but when we were that short, things got resolved without reports.

many cities, see Philly or stl, are only responding to certain types of calls. others get sent to an operator to take a phone report. when I lived in stl, my car was broken into 3-5x a year. before I was a cop, i made one report--realized no one cared and quit calling.

I agree with your read. crime is up, reporting is down and the media is laying cover in an election year. bad times

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Andrew Baxter's avatar

Spot on! The claim that crime is down is dishonest, and a dangerous punch in the gut to the line officers who are out there fighting actual crime. True crime numbers are not only a report card for a citizen to understand their safety level, but also justification for an agency to ask for state/local money to hire more officers, particularly in high crime areas where they are needed. Citizen reports of crime is down and so are the methods that an agency uses to report. My guess is that most agencies know of their changes, but find it too difficult to explain to the public, so they stop reporting until this "blows over" or until they are mandated. One category that can't be manipulated is the number of officers assaulted or killed by violent acts. That could serve as a barometer of whether the overall stats are being honestly reported in an area.

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