March 29, 2007
RPD crime data to be watered-down?
John Butcher at The Cranky Taxpayer is following up on a report from a local offical saying that the information released online by the city will soon include less information.
On March 19, Mr. Doody of DIT told the Public Safety Committee that the City intends to stop posting Incident Based Reporting System (IBRS) data on the Web and instead post only the Part I Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) offense data. The Part I UCR categories do not include important information, including drug offenses, prostitution, promiscuous shooting, and theft from vehicle.
Since 2000 RPD has been posting Richmond’s IBRS data on the City Web site. Richmond’s citizens have begun to use and publish those data. For example Richmondcrime.org provides a convenient portal to and maps of the Richmond IBRS data for the entire city, this site publishes and maps IBRS data for Church Hill in a color-coded and easy to use fashion, the Cranky Taxpayer posts analyses of Richmond’s crime data, with emphasis on drug and prostitution offenses; and Councilman Pantele used the IBRS data to measure the success of Sector Policing in Richmond.
The proposed standard, the UCR Part I, has such categories as murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. These broad categories do not provide information on a number of offenses of particular interest to Richmond’s neighborhoods. For example, theft from auto is a predominant offense reported in quiet neighborhoods, but those data are not available from the UCR. Drug offenses underlie much of Richmond’s violent crime but Part I UCR does not tally drug reports. Prostitution and promiscuous shooting are major concerns to Richmond’s citizens but the Part I UCR does not count those reports.
Mr. Doody claims that the proposed retrogression is necessary because the Citizen Incident Information website varies significantly from RPD reporting requirements” and that the “data provided by the current website is (sic) not aligned with the data standards required to be used by RPD.” As Mr. Doody admits, Richmond reports in IBRS format. The proposed reduction of those reports to UCR format will delete information from the reports and regress to an older, less informative system. Also, Mr. Doody suggests that reporting only UCR data will permit those data to be mapped. At least two Richmond web sites are already mapping IBRS data. If private citizens can map the IBRS data, surely the city can do so.
We’ve attmepted to contact local government sources, including Chief Monroe, to get more information on this, but have received no official reply.
Portions of the above article are based on an email from John Butcher on 3/25/2007.
It gets worse.
After sending the note to Chief Monroe last week, I sent a Freedom of Information Act request to Mr. Doody for:
• An electronic copy of the PowerPoint presentation you [i.e., he] gave to the Public Safety Committee on March 19;
• All records upon which you relied to conclude that there is “confusion related to statistical reporting”;
• All records upon which you relied to conclude that Richmond’s IBRS reporting is contrary to “best practices”; and
• All records upon which you relied to conclude that there are “large inconsistencies” between the IBRS data and the state reporting.
I just received the following response:
In short, the problems Mr. Doody said he was solving (the “confusion related to statistical reporting,” that Richmond’s IBRS reporting is contrary to “best practices,” and that there are “large inconsistencies” between the IBRS data and the state reporting) were not important enough to write them down. That information, juxtaposed with the general incoherence of Mr. Doody’s presentation (I have a copy if you want to see it), suggests to me that the City, or at least Mr. Doody, is proposing to suppress the IBRS data for a reason they do not care to admit.
Can you spell “cook the books?”
So now it sounds like the current information will remain available and the RPD will be offering something of their own that might be very usable. I do hope so, they seem to be the city department really operating at a commendable level these days. I hope, though, that this service won’t be limited to Internet Explorer and Windows like the city’s GIS mapping.
I just recieved the following in an email from Chief Monroe:
Great. The city’s GIS system is incredibly annoying. I sure hope they aren’t using that.
Hopefully their new system will be excellent …