Some police departments fail to tell FBI when they solve homicides

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Police departments from some of the nation's largest cities, including New York City, fail to tell the FBI how many homicides they solve each year, exempting them from public scrutiny or criticism over their efforts to solve fatal crime.

Participation in the FBI's Uniform Crime Report program is voluntary for most departments since few states or local governments have laws that mandate cooperation with federal crime-monitoring efforts.

The vast majority of the nation's police departments do comply. But because some do not, a precise accounting of how many murders are solved nationwide each year is not possible. Instead, the FBI takes what is reported -- roughly 91 percent of the total -- and estimates the rest.

The nation's largest police force, the New York City Police Department, has not reported clearance information since 2002, although the city does report how many homicides have occurred.

Officials with the NYPD refused to comment on why the city doesn't report homicide clearances.

The city reports to the state's Division of Criminal Justice Services, which then reports to the FBI.

John Caher, the division's director of public information, said the NYPD reports whatever it's inclined to report.

"We're required to collect the data and provide it to the FBI," he said. "Unfortunately, the localities are not required to provide it to us."

Gary, Ind., police also withhold homicide clearances in their reporting to the FBI. Indiana, unlike most states, does not have a state-run Uniform Crime Report program. Local police departments are responsible for reporting directly to the FBI.

Vincentria Franklin, crime-analysis technician for the Gary Police Department, said she does not report the clearance numbers because her predecessor did not report them. As far as she knows, there is no policy in place for reporting crime data.

States with Uniform Crime Report programs usually collect all local crime data for submission to the FBI. Some states, such as Illinois and California, also have statutes that require local agencies to report.

Yet even if there is a mandate, there is rarely a penalty for not reporting.

"It's more or less a voluntary system," said Lee Britton, manager of the Criminal Justice Statistics Center for the California Department of Justice.

Compliance is high in California, Britton said, because local agencies recognize the benefits of having crime statistics. For example, agencies must often provide them when applying for grants.

"There's a lot of indirect benefit from these statistics," she said.

Illinois' program requires that agencies report the number of arrests for a given offense, not clearances. The two numbers are not the same, and clearances are not reported to the FBI by the state.

Illinois changed its reporting system in 1995, according to Terri Dietrich, manager of the state's Uniform Crime Report Program.

"Our emphasis in arrest-data collection changed, and was directed at reporting the number of persons arrested for a specific offense," Dietrich said. "We get a cumulative total every month."

Homicide clearance rates cannot be calculated for police departments in Illinois based on the state's data.

Yet some Illinois agencies still keep track of clearances. The Chicago Police Department publishes its homicide clearances, along with all of its crime statistics, in an annual report available on its Web site.

The Rockford Police Department installed a new records-management system in 2005 that allows it to report directly to the FBI, according to Craig Youngberg, the system administrator.

"We actually report our crime statistics two places, to the state of Illinois and to the FBI," Youngberg said. The department reports to the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System, allowing for more comprehensive reports that include clearances.

Richard Rosenfeld, professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, said he understands why clearance is a difficult issue for police departments.

"It can be misleading when a number of arrests that should be applied to this year's clearance rate aren't made until some other reporting period," he said.

For example, a homicide that occurred and is reported in one year may not be solved until the next. Clearances do not necessarily match the offenses reported at the same time.

"The clearance rate is a kind of opaque statistic," Rosenfeld said, "not one the public easily understands."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

Part of Murder Mysteries package