Philadelphia Daily News
Thursday, September 25, 1997

Trust us
Mayor's math just does not add up

Rendell's prideful claim of a significant 17 percent drop in crime comes under fire in light of the city police department's laborious and confusing record-keeping practices and its apparent disregard for the FBI'S rules for crime counting

by Bob Warner and Joseph R. Daughen,
Daily News Staff Writers

The Philadelphia Police Department has been misreporting the number of city crimes to the state police and the FBI, counting thousands of offenses that occurred in one year as if they happened in another.

The practice - a violation of the FBI's crime-counting rules - makes a muddle of the city's reported crime statistics, going back years and probably decades.

It also punctures Mayor Rendell's recent claim that city crime dropped 17 percent from the first half of 1996 to the first half of 1997.

In fact, what dropped was not the number of crimes reported to police, but the number of crimes police fed into their computer system.

It's impossible to say what happened to actual crime rates, because thousands of crimes committed in the first half of 1997 are still waiting to be added to the Police Department's data.

Rendell's 17 percent pronouncement was intended to defuse criticism that his Police Department has been unable to reduce violent crime like other cities had, particularly New York. Since unveiling the figure at a hearing Sept. 2, Rendell and Police Commissioner Richard Neal have trumpeted the number repeatedly.

The mayor's arithmetic was based on a claim that there were 53,550 serious crimes reported in Philadelphia in the first half of 1996. In fact, 23,578 of those crimes actually occurred in 1995, according to a computer analysis of Police Department data by the Daily News.

And the 44,330 crimes the mayor reported occurring in the first six months of 1997 really took place in late 1996 and early 1997, Neal said.

The police commissioner and Rendell spokesman Kevin Feeley insisted that since the comparisons were based on roughly the same time spans, they were ``consistent'' and thus valid.

Feeley conceded that the mayor didn't know until this week that the figures he reported on Sept. 2 weren't really for the periods he described.

``His concern is, `Are we getting a consistent picture?' and we are,'' Feeley said. ``There is roughly a two-month lag, so we're getting November to April as opposed to January to June.

``I think the evidence clearly supports the fact we've tried to be honest and open and consistent in what we do. There's no question in our minds the police are trying to be as honest and consistent as possible. Could the system be improved? Clearly. And it is.''

The Police Department's record-keeping is not nearly so precise. The numbers Rendell cited from 1996 include crimes committed during all 12 months of 1995, and a few from 1994 and even before then as well.

So far, the department has refused to provide any of its 1997 data to the Daily News, so it's not possible to check on Rendell's 1997 numbers.

Neal officially confirmed the Police Department's practice of assigning crimes to the wrong calendar years after the Daily News discovered that 32,700 crimes committed in 1995 had been counted among the 1996 statistics submitted to the state police and the FBI.

Spokesmen for the Pennsylvania State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said they had never been informed of Philadelphia's unusual counting practices. They also said that practice does not comply with the FBI's crime-counting rules.

Neal said the department has been following similar practices ``for the past 30 years that we can determine.'' He said the department needs several months to investigate reported crimes before the offenses go into the Police Department's computer system.

``Granted, there may be a delay because of the sheer volume of crimes that are reported, having it investigated and entered into the system,'' Neal said. ``That's where you get a couple of months of 1995 included in the 1996 numbers, because all the crime has to be reported. We can't just throw it away.''

The impact on the city's year-to-year crime rates is difficult to assess, because the volume of miscounted crime has varied from one year to the next.

Using data provided by the Police Department, covering more than 500,000 serious crimes from 1990 into 1996, the Daily News tried to come up with accurate annual crime counts and compare them to the figures that Philadelphia had reported to the state police and FBI.

In 1991, the last year of the Goode administration, the number of crimes reported by the city appeared to exceed the number that actually occurred. In the four subsequent years, from 1992 through 1995, the official reports appear to under-count crime, but by relatively small margins, 3.5 percent or less.

Both the commissioner and department spokeswoman Sgt. Susan Slawson said that other big cities count crimes the same way. But they refused to identify them or provide any other specific information on practices elsewhere.

Police departments in the nation's four largest cities - New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston - say they have developed strong record-keeping practices, providing accurate crime counts with a maximum lag time of less than two weeks. They denied any reporting practices like Philadelphia's.

In New York City, officials credit their computer system and crime data with helping them to promptly identify criminal ``hot spots'' and mobilize police resources to defuse them.

``If you're going to reduce crime you need to have an accurate picture of the level of crime taking place, right here, right now,'' said Lenny Alcivar, director of press operations for the New York Police Department. ``Our system gives us that information right now, not just as something to reflect on six months or a year down the line.''

Philadelphia's police brass claim they have a separate system for keeping track of major crimes on a day-to-day basis, providing similar flexibility to put police where they're needed.

State police Sgt. William E. Krulac, who ran the state's crime-reporting operation from 1992 until this year, said the state police had been aware that Philadelphia was struggling with a backlog of crime reports, frequently delaying the city's monthly reports to Harrisburg.

``What we weren't aware of was that they routinely carry that over from year to year,'' Krulac said. ``It could put their numbers . . . out of synch with the rest of the state and the nation.''

The state police collect monthly crime counts from Philadelphia and every other municipality in the FBI's Uniform Crime Report program. The monthly reports are due in Harrisburg with about a month's lag time. For example, the monthly crime counts for September would be due around Nov. 1, according to Krulac. The state police then prepare their own computer tape to send the monthly totals to the FBI.

At the end of the year, Krulac said, the state police provide at least two months for municipalities to submit their December crime counts. ``Our deadline for the end-of-year UCRs is Feb. 28,'' he said, ``but we routinely hold the system open into March and sometimes April for Philadelphia and other municipalities, to give them time to complete their reports.''

Problem is, the Philadelphia Police Department has been running several months late getting the bulk of city crimes entered into department computers, according to raw data reviewed by the Daily News.

At some point in the past - when is a mystery - the Philadelphia Police Department gave up even trying to make its monthly reports conform to the months that crimes actually occurred. Since the monthly counts were wrong, the yearly totals were wrong, too.

It appears that murders are still recorded accurately, in the same month they occur. But it usually takes several months to record rapes, robberies, assaults, car thefts and other serious crimes. Some crimes don't get into the police computers for more than a year.

It is this severe time lag that throws in doubt Mayor Rendell's recent announcement serious crime in Philadelphia had dropped 17 percent between the first six months of 1996 and the first half of 1997.

Rendell made the statement at a legislative hearing on Sept. 2, barely two months after the first half of 1997 had ended.

In past years, the department has been unable to come up with accurate monthly crime counts for at least four or five months, and even then, the figures have been incomplete. At a meeting yesterday with Daily News reporters, police officials acknowledged they would not have accurate crime figures for the first half of 1997 until sometime around the end of the year.

In fact, the 1996 figures unveiled by Rendell on Sept. 2 dovetail almost exactly with the crime data that police fed into their computers between January and June 1996.

Officials at the FBI described Philadelphia's practices as a clear violation of their rules for counting crime.

``There is no provision for contributing agencies to report data from a prior year in order to develop a full 12-month report,'' said Bennie F. Brewer, the administrator in charge of the FBI's Uniform Crime Report program. ``It is not UCR policy to accept extrapolations, estimates or any type of crime report other than actual offense counts.''

Another FBI official, Harlin McEwen, said most major cities face significant backlogs putting crime data into their computers. But he said he did not know of any that dealt with the problem the way Philadelphia has by reporting crimes in months or years other than those when they occurred.

McEwen said he talked personally with Neal this week, after the Daily News raised questions about Philadelphia's crime-counting, and told Neal that Philadelphia's procedure was ``incorrect.''

``This is a voluntary program,'' McEwen said. ``We don't have any legal authority over them on this matter, at all. They have indicated their willingness to do it right, and they also asked if I could give them assistance and advice on how to do it better.''

Police officials said yesterday they have already begun improving their record-keeping with a new computer system that can provide daily counts of minor crimes. They said it will be six to nine months longer before they can use it to track murders, rapes and other serious offenses.