The NYPD Tapes
Fantastic piece on the Voice's investigation about cops jiggering crime stats by refusing to make crime reports, or calling serious crimes minor ones, then going after the whistleblower who made their doings public. Graham Rayman writes in the Village Voice:
For more than two years, Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded every roll call at the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn and captured his superiors urging police officers to do two things in order to manipulate the "stats" that the department is under pressure to produce: Officers were told to arrest people who were doing little more than standing on the street, but they were also encouraged to disregard actual victims of serious crimes who wanted to file reports.Arresting bystanders made it look like the department was efficient, while artificially reducing the amount of serious crime made the commander look good.
In October 2009, Schoolcraft met with NYPD investigators for three hours and detailed more than a dozen cases of crime reports being manipulated in the district. Three weeks after that meeting--which was supposed to have been kept secret from Schoolcraft's superiors--his precinct commander and a deputy chief ordered Schoolcraft to be dragged from his apartment and forced into the Jamaica Hospital psychiatric ward for six days.
...Investigators went beyond Schoolcraft's specific claims and found many other instances in the 81st Precinct where crime reports were missing, had been misclassified, altered, rejected, or not even entered into the computer system that tracks crime reports.
These weren't minor incidents. The victims included a Chinese-food delivery man robbed and beaten bloody, a man robbed at gunpoint, a cab driver robbed at gunpoint, a woman assaulted and beaten black and blue, a woman beaten by her spouse, and a woman burgled by men who forced their way into her apartment.
...•In a 2009 incident, an elderly man said he was a burglary victim. When he showed up at the precinct to file a report, a sergeant told him to go to another precinct to file. Again, this is a violation of the NYPD's own policy. It was only after a newspaper article appeared months later that a report was taken.
•A 60-year-old retired traffic agent made repeated visits to the precinct to get a complaint number for her stolen vehicle from May through June 2009. The investigation showed the report was never entered into the NYPD computer system, preventing it from being counted in the crime statistics. Investigators concluded nothing would have been done if the woman hadn't been a former traffic agent and pressed the issue.







Once again, the police prove that they are not to be relied upon for help with crimes committed against the public.
Nothing quite so highlights the necessity of the second amendment as stories like this.
Jazzhands at March 10, 2012 8:14 AM
As for the charge that Mauriello misled investigators, Richter says: "He was directed to recall incidents that happened a year or more before. It's difficult for any person or police officer or reporter to describe a timeline of events that happened 12 months previous. There was no misleading. He testified to the best of his memory at the time."
Such a pity that that excuse, when used by peopele who arent cops, results in obstruction of justices charges
lujlp at March 10, 2012 8:23 AM
There was a blog post and youtube video from Amy about don't talk to the cops.
Now it looks like even if you talk to the cops, it doesn't matter, unless you are confessing guilt.
I have done my best over the years to not use statistics to beat the system. The NYPD precinct is.
When it gets to a statistical enumeration -- I will find a new position. If it is "You didn't close three cases today," it is because the end-loser fucked things up so badly that it permeates the system. It will take me six business hours to un-fuck whatever.
Jim P. at March 10, 2012 11:13 AM
In the NYPD, the only thing more hated than Al Sharpton are the Traffic Agents, once called "Brownies," because of their brown uniforms. When Bill Bratton changed the shirts of the cops from light blue to the darker blue, the Brownies went to blue. The cops still hated them.
In fairness to the cops, the Brownies had a tendency to be bigger assholes than the cops and would not give anyone a break. I wonder if it was the Brownie hatred that prevented a report more than the crime stats being fixed.
Kristen at March 10, 2012 9:41 PM
Nope, it was blatant manipulation of department statistics. There was a really good This American Life episode about Adrian Schoolcraft - http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/414/right-to-remain-silent
Sam at March 12, 2012 9:21 AM
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