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19 Cops Accused Of Downgrading Crimes In The Bronx
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jul 17, 2015
Modified Jul 17, 2015
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Christopher Parypa / Shutterstock.com
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Jul 17, 2015
Modified Jul 17, 2015
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Nineteen NYPD officers in the Bronx are accused of downgrading crimes to make the neighborhood they police appear safer.
According to a departmental release, the NYPD's Quality Assurance Division looked at 1,558 complaints in the South Bronx's 40th Precinct filed last year and found that 55 of them had been improperly logged. The offenses included petty larceny, misdemeanor assault, criminal mischief and criminal trespass.
While the 40th Precinct reported a 14% decrease in overall crime in 2014, that decrease has now been corrected to 11.4% to reflect the stat-tampering.
The charged NYPD officers include a lieutenant, eight sergeants, nine police officers, and a detective. All will be prosecuted internally by the NYPD's Department Advocate.
“These disciplinary charges are strict but fair,” NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said in the release.
"Commanders are held strictly accountable for the integrity of crime complaint reporting within their commands. Policing in the CompStat era requires that the accuracy of our numbers must be unquestionable."
Policing in the CompStat era, where careers hinge on minuscule decreases in crime over laughably short periods of time (earlier this week Bratton and de Blasio held a press conference to hail a 5.8% drop in crime in just 10 precincts in the city over the period of six weeks), all but encourages officers to treat complaints of stolen property as "lost property."
In 2013, former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly commissioned a group of former prosecutors to audit the department's crime statistics. They dryly noted that "a close review of the NYPD's statistics and analysis demonstrate that the misclassifications of reports may have an appreciable effect on certain reported crime rates," and said they found 800 misclassifications citywide over the period of 2009 to 2011.
Today's announcement involved 55 of them in a single precinct over a 4-month period.
“The purposeful misrepresentation of crime data is rare but nevertheless unacceptable, and it will be dealt with accordingly," Bratton said in the release.
Tagged
compstat
crime manipulation
stat juking
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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