Philadelphia Inquirer
Sunday, January 24, 1999

Police try to aid victims of misreported crimes

Thousands of 1998 cases are under review. Hundreds of people could be eligible for state money.

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

They were victimized twice - once when they were robbed or beaten, and again when police discounted their stories and downgraded the crimes.

Now, the Philadelphia Police Department is trying to set things right.

In its latest response to disclosures of widespread fudging of crime reports, the department is poring over thousands of 1998 cases to identify crime victims who may have been cut off from state financial aid because police classified the incidents as minor offenses or dumped them in noncrime categories such as ``hospital case.''

Police will then contact the victims to tell them that the incidents have been recoded to reflect what really happened and that they may be eligible for money from the state victim-assistance program.

The scope of the effort is vast. Department auditors have determined that 11,700 crimes last year were classified incorrectly.

Police Commissioner John F. Timoney said ``a significant number of crimes or incidents . . . could involve complainants who were entitled to compensation.''

``The system is in place for all to be contacted,'' he said.

Carol Lavery, director of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Victims' Services, praised the effort.

``Anything that can be done, especially by people in power, to ameliorate some prior wrong is healing,'' said Lavery, whose office urged police to reach out to the victims.

Lavery said the effort ``should reverse any damage that might have occurred to individual victims and notify qualifying victims so they can apply.''

The state program assists victims of violent crime. It pays up to $35,000 for uninsured medical bills and lost wages. Stolen cash or property is not covered except for Social Security, disability payments and pension benefits. Compensation money comes from court-imposed fines paid by convicted criminals.

The program assists only those who can supply evidence of a crime, such as a police report. Downgrading of incident reports hinders crime victims in two ways:

In some cases, they have been turned down for compensation because police reports depicted the incidents as something other than crimes - ``hospital cases'' or ``disturbances'' - or as ``unfounded.''

In other cases, victims never learned about the state program and thus didn't apply. Typically, victims' advocates reach out to people using lists of major crimes compiled daily in police districts. Crimes that are downgraded don't make the list.

Police auditors have been reviewing incident reports to ferret out cases of downgrading since Timoney took office in March and began preaching that effective policing depends on an accurate statistical picture of crime.

But in its focus on cleaning up the numbers so a defensible overall count could be submitted to the FBI, the department did not address how downgrading had affected crime victims' access to financial aid.

After Inquirer articles published in November highlighted the impact on victims, state officials and victims' advocates began discussions with police brass about how to identify and reach out to people who may have been prevented by downgrading from getting compensation.

In response to questions from The Inquirer, Timoney said in a statement issued Friday that the department had developed ``a comprehensive survey and notification process . . . to identify and contact all eligible crime victims from 1998.''

The statement offered no estimate of how many people that might be. But state officials said the number likely would be in the hundreds.

The estimate that 11,700 crimes were misclassified last year is the result of a series of reviews by the department's Quality Assurance Bureau, an auditing arm that Timoney established last year.

Typically, police record about 175,000 major and minor crimes each year.

Of the 1998 crimes found to have been miscoded, about 7,500 have been upgraded to major ``Part I'' offenses as defined by the FBI, including robbery, aggravated assault and other violent crimes. The remainder were upgraded to lesser ``Part II'' offenses, such as vandalism and simple assault.

In addition to examining those upgraded cases to see if the victims might qualify for compensation, the department has referred many for investigation by detectives. The cases were not sent to detectives in the first place because the initial miscoding described incidents too minor to warrant investigation.

But of the 11,700 total, about 1,000 will not be investigated, because the trail has gone cold, police said.

``Why assign a detective to investigate something from four months ago when there is very little possibility that it could be solved?'' asked Chief Inspector Vincent R. DeBlasis, head of the Quality Assurance Bureau. ``And if we did that, there would be crimes committed today that would not be investigated for several months because they were looking at the old ones.''

DeBlasis said, however, that all upgraded cases in which there were injuries, a known suspect, domestic abuse or serious loss of property have been given to detectives.

Inquirer articles have described how Philadelphia police underreported crime for years, downgrading major offenses against people and property to minor ones to make the city's crime rate look better.

Among cases described in a Nov. 22 article were those of a West Philadelphia man robbed of $300 in disability benefits last year; a South Philadelphia man whose arm was broken in a brawl in March; and a Center City man whose eye socket was shattered in a surprise assault in 1990.

Police classified the first incident as a ``disturbance,'' the second as a ``hospital case'' and the third as ``unfounded.''

As a result, the West Philadelphia man was never told he could apply for victim's compensation. The second victim applied, was rejected and is appealing his case. The third had to persuade police to reverse the ``unfounded'' designation before he could collect $18,655 to cover medical bills.

Last year, the victim-assistance program approved payments to 844 Philadelphians, who got an average of $1,900 each.

Lavery said about a half-dozen people whose crimes had been upgraded had recently applied for aid.

``We have gotten some that were initially coded as `hospital cases' and have now been changed [to assaults],'' she said. ``So there is something going on out there.''

Even if hundreds of new cases surface, the system can handle it, Lavery said. The program paid out $5 million statewide last year but still ended the year with a $4 million surplus.

``Our goal is to double the number of claims that we are paying out,'' she said. ``We can take it. We will handle it. In fact, I welcome it.''