Crime Stats - Officials Should Not Play The Numbers Game

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/07/25/Opinion/Florida_s_still_too_v.shtml

From the St. Pete Times today:

"The point is this: A few more crimes or a few less, especially in small places, can throw the larger picture out of whack. Rather than play the numbers game, officials should focus on crimes and areas that need attention from law enforcement."

This is all a house of cards that will collapse. It is pathetic the way managers manipulate stats to look good. Things are getting borderline criminal. Officers are loading up on arrests for people already at booking and other officers are writing their names on the bottom of affidavits when they did not even involve themselves. This is PERJURY!!!!
One day it is all going to blow up.

If you don't think its true, pull up I-net and check the stats for last month. I know what I did that month, but the stats don't reflect it. They were completely off. I guess when I make a few s25 arrests someone changes them later on to a theft. Look our burglaries just dropped!! They are even stats that I didn't even do. I guess they have to shift the crime somewhere.

As for violent crimes being down. How many calls have you gone to for s23 or or s24 where the compl decided nothing would be done so they refused to make a report. No victim no crime!!

It seems like the dopers have been running wild with everyone working s10,s25,s21 prevention. Dope leads to other crimes, when did something change?

I agree the stats are off. According to my pink copies i wrote 21 citations last month, but my total on i-net was only 17. Go figure.


And to all you rookies out there who do s-50 all night then t8 with a report for a s19, How about doing some real police work like getting back into the neighborhooods and and making bad peoples life hell. Sometimes s80's are more improtant then that weak citation.

I agree with you whole heartedly about the stats being ridiculous, but the problem isn't the rookies. They along with everyone else are just trying to survive the stat game. It is a MGMT problem, maybe rookie mgmt who never worked the street to begin with. It is ridiculous and needs to stop. At some point the crime stats are gonna sky rocket when and if they are ever tracked right again.

I hate to start things with "back in the day" but here's the deal. Back then we actually INVESTIGATED offenses. I'm speaking of S/10's which I am dealing with frequently in my second career. These days the "investigators" (and I use that term VERY loosely) call up the owner of the S/10 and if they refuse to take a poly and/or fail a poly, zip it's magically "unfounded". That's the end of it, period. Stats gone, car thefts in Tampa go down and the City is happy. I'm not talking about the obvious crack lease situations, I'm talking about stolen, crashed, burned etc. What the heck???

You obviously are now in the insurance industry. Why should a law enforcement do all the work for you when you are going to pay out on a false crime anyway? If someone reports that there car is stolen, then crashed or burned then it would seem to me that there may be a problem.

The problem is insurance fraud. The State of Florida has an investigative agency just for that. Believe it or not, they have arrest powers too. Maybe they will not jump through hoops for you either.

The bottom line is that if a complainant will not cooperate in an investigation, refuses or fails a polygraph, then they have no credibility and the SAO would never file charges. Why waste the department's resources on this? Let them cooperate and maybe there would be an investigation.

I am trying to think of the last time that I left the keys in my car, it was stolen, then it was crashed or burned, and then I would not assist law enforcement. Oh wait, I just remembered. That would be NEVER!

Therefore Retired and Jaded, just be happy that you have a job and your company will continue to pay out false claims no matter the circumstances. By the way do you remember any recent hurricanes where the insurance companies were paying claims to people 2-300 miles from the affected areas? No you probably couldn't remember, because you were too busy writing checks. SAD