July 2014 Warning Bells article

Are we fighting crime, or fighting crime reporting?

Crime statistic figures, when you think about it, are not made up of crimes, they are made up of crime reports. Unreported crimes are not part of the statistics. If all one cares about is looking good with the statistics, there are two ways of doing it—stopping crime and/or stopping crime reporting. Either way, the numbers come down.

Compstat came to us from New York. New York crime statistics are down as much as 80 percent. Does this mean ompstat works? It can, says a recent book, but it can be abused too. “The Crime Numbers Game, Management by Manipulation” by John Eterno and Eli Silverman is an account of an investigation into the effectiveness of Compstat. Hear warning bells.

According to Eterno and Silverman, Compstat starts with a relevant premise, namely that accurate and current information allows the proper allocation of resources to prevent crime. However, over time, management top- down pressure at Compstat meetings for a constant reduction in crime statistics cause captains to put pressure on lieutenants who put pressure on detectives who put pressure on patrol officers. The pressure eventually becomes unbearable all up and down the line, and then the games begin.

According to Eterno and Silverman, New York officers worried less about being shot or seeing their fellow officers hurt than they did about the pressures of their daily dealings with upper management, especially upper management who had just had a bad Compstat day. The pressure to keep numbers down is the officers’ most common complaint. “Unfortunately, actual crime has become a secondary issue. As long as the numbers of crime reports appear to be decreasing, the upper echelon is kept satiated. Officers are keenly aware that they somehow need to keep these numbers down so the commander will not be exposed to the wrath of the high-ranking officials running Compstat meetings,” the book says, and follows up with assertions that altruistic officers are eventually reduced from problem solvers to the status of “sheep relegated to the hopeless routine of getting and watching numbers.”

So apparently there is Good Compstat and Bad Compstat. Good Compstat is when it is used to pinpoint crime trends and properly allocate resources to arrest criminals and Bad Compstat is when it is the source of pressure to manipulate the crime numbers. So how did Bad Compstat work in New York?

The book’s investigation found several ways that NYPD cut the crime rate by cutting crime reports. By the way, a key source of the book’s information came from the NYPD’s own police union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, that called Compstat “a great idea that has been corrupted by human nature.” Some of the statistic-lowering techniques listed by the PBA are, “Don’t file reports, misclassify crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, under-value the property lost to crime so it’s not a felony, and report a series of crimes as a single event.” Other methods reported are to inconvenience the victim so they will never report a crime again. One incident listed was when a precinct commander shut down a fast-food joint over the lunch hour to “investigate” a grand theft when the manager reported that a pocketbook was stolen from one of his customers. The loss of the lunch hour business discouraged future reports. Other similar strategies were requiring robbery victims to come down to the station before a report would be made, or having long forms for victims to fill out before getting to the crime report. Sometimes, officers resorted to attempting to get victims to change their stories, or, as in one case, telling a person whose laptop was snatched by a thief that he had just “lost” it. A website was set up with the depreciated values of items and officers were required to go on the website and record the items depreciated value (not the victim’s stated value) for property crimes, in the hopes that the theft would not amount to a felony.

When crime rates fall, it makes a lot of people happy. The mayor is happy; his or her administration is running a low-crime city. It’s good for business and good for votes. The chief of police is happy; falling crime rates mean that he, or she, is effectively managing criminal activity. The Police Commission is happy; low crime rates mean their policies are effective. Commanders and captains are happy; they aren’t being beat up in Compstat meetings. There is a lot of incentive to not look too closely at the accuracy of Compstat numbers.

But not everyone is happy. In New York, it started with the citizens. A freelance reporter was overpowered and dragged into a wooded area by a man who sexually assaulted her. When he fled, she reported it to the police. She was interviewed for two hours and re-interviewed by a Special Victims Unit for another hour. She was later told that what had happened to her was only a misdemeanor. To make a long story short, she went public. When she finally got a copy of the crime report, the things that she had reported that happened to her that made the crime a felony were not there. Another incident was uncovered where a serial rapist was caught pushing a woman into an apartment. The rapist was arrested and implicated himself in six other rapes. When the detective retrieved the six crime reports, he found they had been all been apparently downgraded to criminal trespass by patrol supervisors. “They look to eliminate certain elements in the narrative,” the detective said, “One word or two words can make the change to a misdemeanor.”

After the citizens, some of the officers who were seeing what was happening began to speak out. That didn’t go over well. According to the book, one officer, after exposing manipulation of crime statistics, found a deputy chief, a precinct commander and other officers knocking at his door. They forced entry, threw him to the floor, handcuffed him and took him to a mental hospital where it took him six days to be released. Another officer who went to the press over ticket quotas and demands by management for stop and frisk reports found himself facing charges of misconduct and filing false police reports.

Then the press got involved, committees were formed, audits were set up and other things began to happen to cause debate as whether a “numbers” approach to crime was the best way to manage police departments.

The point of this story is that LAPD is now where NYPD was just before this began to happen. Compstat is the tail wagging the dog. The Department has made a few officers millionaires by pushing the numbers, in this case, tickets, and since LAPD management learns slowly, there are probably a few more millionaires yet to be made. We have a new head Risk Management person who, hopefully, realizes that civil lawsuit losses from management abusing employees is millions of dollars more than losses because of uses of force and traffic accidents.

That being said, when it hits the fan on Compstat from whatever source, no one in management will admit that there was any pressure on the troops to manipulate the numbers. The blame will all roll downhill. I am sure there is a PII somewhere who can be blamed for everything if this is happening. Thus, the following advice.

If you are taking a report, make sure that all of the elements of the crime are listed in the report as given to you by the victim. If you are instructed to downgrade a report, make sure that you put in the body of the report who gave you instructions to do so. Do not under any circumstances allow it to be perceived by victims that you are trying to talk them out of making a crime report. If you receive, or have received, any pressure to do anything that seems unethical in relation to “the numbers,” report it to the Inspector General. You will have confidentiality and, if you are later retaliated against in any way, you may possibly have whistleblower protection.

Good Compstat helps us deal with crime. Bad Compstat gives a false sense of security, obscures the true crime picture to the advantage of criminals, adversely affects hiring and deployment decisions, and pits management against officers in the never-ending pressure to lower the numbers. Bad Compstat needs to go.

Be legally careful out there.