LAPD’S PHONY VIOLENT CRIME STATS

Under the stewardship of Chief Charlie Beck, LAPD has been falsifying its violent crime statistics, classifying felonious assaults and robberies as misdemeanors

A Los Angeles Times investigation has revealed that from the end of September 2012 to the end of September 2013, LAPD misclassified nearly 1,200 violent crimes as minor offenses. Included were a shitload of stabbings, serious physical assaults and robberies, all felonies that were reported as misdemeanors. The Times found that nearly all the misclassified crimes were actually aggravated assaults, and if those incidents had been recorded correctly, the total aggravated assaults for the 12-month period would have been almost 14% higher than the official figure.

There is no reason to believe that the stats were only falsified during that one year period. You can bet it was done well before September 2012 and is probably still being done now. But LAPD is not alone in deliberately falsifying crime statistics.

Professors John Eterno of Molloy College and Eli Silverman of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the authors of “The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation,” have exposed NYPD’s longtime manipulation of crime stats. In NY assault becomes harassment, robbery becomes grand theft, grand theft becomes petty theft, and burglary becomes criminal trespass.

In Houston, some obvious murders were deliberately reported as suicides even though the victims were shot multiple times. And it was recently revealed that one HPD homicide investigator did not even bother to investigate several murder cases that were assigned to him.

I am convinced that the manipulation of crime statistics is widespread throughout the U.S., and not just in Los Angeles, New York and Houston. The stats are falsified in order to make police agencies look good and so that city and county officials can brag about low crime rates.

And because the FBI depends on reports submitted by city and county law enforcement agencies to compile its Uniform Crime Statistics, those stats are not reliable either.

As for LAPD falsifying its violent crime stats, this comes on top of accusations that a sergeant who had been demoted for having sex with Chief Beck’s daughter, was reinstated to his rank so as to keep the press from learning about their dalliances, and on top of a questionable purchase by LAPD of a horse belonging to his daughter.

It seems to me that the Los Angeles Police Commission should have some serious misgivings about offering Chief Beck another five-year term, but all reports indicate that he will be reappointed today.