MJS Case studies show pattern of downgraded violent crimes. Lott comments similarly.

MJS said:

The Journal Sentinel identified more than 500 incidents of aggravated assault that were incorrectly reported to the state and FBI as simple assaults by the Milwaukee Police Department. Here is a sample of them, all of which FBI crime experts told the Journal Sentinel should have been classified as aggravated assault.

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MJS said:

When Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn touted the city's fourth-straight year of falling crime in February, hundreds of beatings, stabbings and child abuse cases were missing from the count, a Journal Sentinel investigation has found.

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2,000 convicted criminals have been exonerated since 1989. Sounds impressive, right?

[with link URLs to FBI "Crime in the US" for a number of years.]

If this was the rate over 23 years, the number of arrests would equal 13,513,576, but given
how much higher crime rates were back then, the annual rate would be much higher.


At 13.5 million arrests and say 90 percent conviction rate, the total convictions would be
12.1 million. 2,000 out of 12.1 million (which again is an underestimate because of the
fact that the crimes that were eligible for exoneration were over a much longer period of
time) is only a mistake rate of 0.0165 percent. That seems like a remarkably low mistake
rate to me.

For murders alone, a similar analysis implies 292,049 arrests. At a conviction rate of 90
percent, that implies 264,844. 100 divided by 264,844 comes to a rate of only 0.038%
(but the upward bias problem mentioned above is even greater here because people are
in prison for murder over such a long period of time).

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The weapon code listed, 12, represents a "handgun." This is the correct description of the weapon used. However, in the detailed data sent to the state and FBI, the weapon is listed as a 90 and 40, which stands for "other weapon" and "personal weapon." The Journal Sentinel found hundreds of examples where weapons were misreported and some like this one where the weapon code reported to the FBI doesn't match the weapon code on the incident report.

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JJC said:

With the way Barrett is running Milwaukee, IF he gets Walkers job the crime rate in Wisconsin will drop down to zero.

JJC

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the misreported cases found in 2011 alone are enough that Flynn would have been announcing a 1.1% increase in violent crime in February, instead of a 2.3% decline from the reported 2010 numbers, which also include errors.

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Instead of accurately reporting the weapons used as firearms, knives or blunt objects, the department reported them to the state and FBI in a way that avoided triggering scrutiny by those who review the numbers.

Criminologists reviewed the Journal Sentinel's findings and said they showed a pattern of misreporting that has helped drive down the city's crime rate.

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That clearly indicates a systemic problem in the department... If (police) do it in one or two cases, it's not a big deal. If they do it in a large number of cases, it's suspicious and probably improper.

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