KTRK: How accurate are HPD's crime stats?
KTRK-13's Tom Abrahams reports that there are more problems with reporting of crime statistics at HPD:
How safe is your neighborhood? You might not be getting the whole story from police, when it comes to certain types of crimes that are going on.
Eyewitness News has spent five months looking into the way the Houston Police Department codes and reports crimes. We asked for an explanation to what we found a week ago, and sent the department copies of what we found. As of tonight we've not gotten any explanation, though the chief did talk about the issue in general.
On a stretch of road a year ago, Houston Police Officer Eric Dargin is accused of stopping a woman and then sexually assaulting her. He's charged with the crime. Prosecutors say they have DNA evidence. His next court date is in June.
But if you check HPD's crime statistics, you won't find his case listed at all. You also won't find at least six other sexual assault cases in which the suspect was charged. And there are another eight listed as less violent crimes, calling into question the legitimacy of HPD's reported crime statistics.
[snip]
Eyewitness News also found 20 charged aggravated assaults that HPD coded as lesser crimes. While coding a crime is not a science, there are the Uniform Crime Reporting guidelines, called UCR, which tell officers to code the most serious crime if more than one is committed.
Are they always doing that? Is the reporting consistent? Without HPD statisticians answering our questions about specific cases, it's hard to know.
Here is Chief Hurtt's response to Abrahams' questions about the coding problems:
HPD Chief Harold Hurtt said, "(They're) as reliable as human beings are, I guess."
That's as helpful as ever. Thanks Chief Hurtt!
When KHOU-11's award-winning reporter Mark Greenblatt reported last year that HPD was underreporting murders, the response from Chief Hurtt (and his ghostblogger) was underwhelming, to say the least.
Maybe this time around, HPD will actually try to figure out these reporting problems, and will get the local media some answers. We do look forward to hearing from Chief Hurtt's ghostblogger, though (and maybe even Martha Montalvo, who is always entertaining!).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/24/08 11:12 PM | Houston Miscellany | Print | Comments (1)
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