Major crimes climb in Phila.

Top police officials say the 9 percent increase simply
reflects more accurate reporting, not a surge in violence.

By Michael Matza, Craig R. McCoy and Mark Fazlollah, INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

New Justice Department data show a record drop in crime across the country.

Yet Philadelphia's preliminary statistics for 1998 reflect the opposite trend. Thefts were up 66 percent. Aggravated assaults rose 45 percent. Burglaries and rapes were each up 15 percent from the year before.

Overall, the number of reported major crimes climbed 9 percent, and the surge was most pronounced in the second half of the year.

Did the nation's fifth-largest city really get that much more dangerous - while the rest of the nation was getting safer?

No, say top Police Department officials. It wasn't crime that increased, they say, but rather the honest reporting of it by police officers and supervisors.

``I attribute it to proper coding and classification of crime,'' said Chief Inspector Frank M. Pryor, head of patrol operations for the department. ``It doesn't indicate any crime wave per se.''

The latest numbers bear witness to how an ingrained culture of underreporting distorted the city's statistics for years.

Lawrence Sherman, a University of Maryland criminologist recently named to lead an independent panel that will advise the department on how to restore credibility to its numbers, said the rise in reported crime was not cause for alarm.

``Philadelphians should generally ignore changes in any crime category from 1997 to 1998,'' Sherman said. ``We have to completely recalibrate. It's kind of like throwing out a scale that has been showing you underweight for years.

``It doesn't mean you're gaining weight just because you've finally got an accurate scale.''

The best guess is that actual crime in Philadelphia was flat or falling last year. The number of homicides, an important barometer and one hard to tinker with, was down 19 percent - from 418 in 1997 to 340 in 1998.

Richard B. Costello, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said, ``The sad part of this entire thing'' is that there is no way of knowing for sure whether crime was up or down.

``You can't be higher or lower than fog,'' he said. ``If they are finally doing the numbers right, the only way it is going to have any relative value is to compare this year to next year. I think you'd almost have to count this as Year One in a newly cleaned up tabulation process.''

An Inquirer series published in November described how Philadelphia police underreported crime for years, downgrading major offenses against people and property to minor ones, or removing them from the official tally altogether, to make the city's crime figures look better.

Some stabbings became ``hospital cases.'' Burglaries were redefined as ``lost property,'' car break-ins as ``vandalism'' and holdups as ``threats.'' Rapes have gone on the books as ``investigate person.''

The aim of such downgrading was to move incidents out of the group of Part I major crimes that the FBI uses to calculate crime rates for the nation's big cities. Active and retired officers say the practice was driven by pressure from the top to make Philadelphia stack up well against other cities.

Over the summer, Police Commissioner John F. Timoney, an apostle of using crime data to police more effectively, stripped two district captains of their commands after questions were raised about the accuracy of crime figures for their areas.

The move put muscle behind the new commissioner's rhetoric about the importance of accurate statistics. In late summer, the volume of reported crime began to climb in many categories.

A week after the Inquirer series was published, Pryor, 55, a 35-year veteran of the department, ordered an overhaul of incident reporting, demanding accuracy from patrol officers and supervisors who - in his words - too often turned incident reporting into a ``creative writing exercise.''

Among other things, Pryor ordered that police write and sign an incident report every time they respond to a report of crime - even if the report proves unfounded. Previously, officers could dispose of a case by deeming it ``unfounded'' without having to put anything in writing.

In a memo summarizing the new system, Pryor called commanders' attention to designations such as ``investigate person'' and ``hospital case,'' which he said were especially likely to mask serious offenses.

In an interview Friday, Pryor said that ``investigate person'' cases had virtually disappeared since his memo went out, and that the proportion of police responses deemed unfounded had dropped from 34 percent of the total to 18 percent.

Likewise, Pryor said, police had all but stopped using the ``hospital case'' label.

``We're seeing major improvements,'' he said. ``A lot had to do with training. It's a surge in reported crime. We're getting it right this time.''

The Inquirer series reported that downgrading was particularly pronounced with regard to aggravated assault, defined as an attack that inflicts or is intended to inflict serious injury. For years, Philadelphia has had one of the lowest rates of that crime of any big city.

Many such attacks, The Inquirer found, were classified as ``hospital cases'' or were downgraded to simple assault, a minor offense not included in the FBI's tally of serious crimes.

The 45 percent increase in aggravated assaults in 1998 - to 8,123 from 5,613 in 1997 - reflects more accurate reporting, not a spike in violence, department brass say.

``The bottom line,'' Pryor said, ``is if there are serious injuries and you're taken to the hospital, it's an aggravated assault. No more `hospital case.' That's OK with me.''

Sherman, the criminologist, said he and Timoney would meet this week to name as many as nine other academics to serve on the advisory panel. Two issues on the committee's agenda, Sherman said, are insuring that reports are written in the first place and that, once written, they are classified properly.

For a department dependent on statistics to map crime and help guide police deployment, accuracy is critical, he said.

Sherman said that although scrupulous reporting will ``drive up the apparent crime rate of the city,'' that ``will not increase anybody's risk of becoming a victim, and may actually help the Police Department to reduce the real amount of crime substantially.''

Inquirer staff writer Howard Goodman contributed to this report.