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Chicago Police Department: New tricks for undercounting the city’s murders
“It reminds me of three-card monte”
A full year has passed since Chicago raised serious questions about the accuracy of the Chicago Police Department’s crime statistics under Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his handpicked top cop, Garry McCarthy. The investigation found that the department underreported homicides in 2013 by misclassifying at least 10 killings, including that of Tiara Groves. We also revealed how the department systematically downgraded other violent felonies and serious property crimes. More than 40 current and former police officers of various ranks told us that the misclassifications resulted from intense pressure that top police superiors put on rank-and-file officers to produce crime numbers that go in only one direction: down.
After publication, did the police superintendent’s office check into the truth behind the cases we flagged? It doesn’t appear so. According to scores of internal emails we obtained through a request filed under the Freedom of Information Act, top officials in the police department and in Mayor Emanuel’s office, working in unison, focused on damage control.
The day the article was published, a producer from WTTW’s Chicago Tonight reached out to Adam Collins, then the director of the police department’s Office of News Affairs. Collins turned down the producer’s request for a police official to appear on the show and tried to persuade her to cancel the segment altogether. “What a joke,” he updated his City Hall counterparts. “Spent all afternoon arguing with the people who air Sesame Street.”
“Quash this,” Sarah Hamilton, then Emanuel’s top press aide, directed a staffer two days later. “I told [Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed] that it was all bullshit and lies.”
Meanwhile, a furious McCarthy launched a vigorous hunt for anyone in the department who might have contacted the magazine. In a series of department meetings, say sources, he used terms like “traitor” and “traitorous act” to describe the sharing of information with the press. The police department’s current director of news affairs, Marty Maloney, declined to name who ordered the internal probe—now more than a year old—or to provide other details because “the investigation is still ongoing.”
A full year has passed since Chicago raised serious questions about the accuracy of the Chicago Police Department’s crime statistics under Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his handpicked top cop, Garry McCarthy. The investigation found that the department underreported homicides in 2013 by misclassifying at least 10 killings, including that of Tiara Groves. We also revealed how the department systematically downgraded other violent felonies and serious property crimes. More than 40 current and former police officers of various ranks told us that the misclassifications resulted from intense pressure that top police superiors put on rank-and-file officers to produce crime numbers that go in only one direction: down.
After publication, did the police superintendent’s office check into the truth behind the cases we flagged? It doesn’t appear so. According to scores of internal emails we obtained through a request filed under the Freedom of Information Act, top officials in the police department and in Mayor Emanuel’s office, working in unison, focused on damage control.
The day the article was published, a producer from WTTW’s Chicago Tonight reached out to Adam Collins, then the director of the police department’s Office of News Affairs. Collins turned down the producer’s request for a police official to appear on the show and tried to persuade her to cancel the segment altogether. “What a joke,” he updated his City Hall counterparts. “Spent all afternoon arguing with the people who air Sesame Street.”
“Quash this,” Sarah Hamilton, then Emanuel’s top press aide, directed a staffer two days later. “I told [Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed] that it was all bullshit and lies.”
Meanwhile, a furious McCarthy launched a vigorous hunt for anyone in the department who might have contacted the magazine. In a series of department meetings, say sources, he used terms like “traitor” and “traitorous act” to describe the sharing of information with the press. The police department’s current director of news affairs, Marty Maloney, declined to name who ordered the internal probe—now more than a year old—or to provide other details because “the investigation is still ongoing.”
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/June-2015/Chicago-crime-stats/?utm_campaign=Chimag+CPD+051115&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=FB
I'm sure this is unique to Chicago.
1 replies
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