Davin News Server

On Fri, 27 Sep 2024 09:14:49 -0700,  Siri Cruise says...  

The Biden administration on crime:

> Lies, damn lies, and ignore unpleasant facts.
 
Yup.

Let the rant begin, and if you don't like it, 

The transition in crime reporting methodologies by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and related law 
enforcement agencies across the United States has undergone significant changes, particularly with the switch to the 
National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) from the traditional Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Summary Reporting 
System (SRS). Here's how this has impacted reporting:

Change in Reporting System:
The FBI initiated this transition to collect more granular data on crime incidents, aiming for a comprehensive 
understanding rather than just summary statistics. NIBRS captures detailed data on each crime incident, including 
victim-offender relationships, arrestees' age, and weapon use, which was not as thoroughly detailed in the old system.

Adoption Rate and Challenges:
While the intention was for all agencies to adopt NIBRS by 2021, the transition has been uneven. This led to a period 
where significant portions of the country's crime data were either not reported or reported differently than expected:

Voluntary Participation:
Participation in the UCR program, including NIBRS, is voluntary. Some large departments, including those in major 
cities like New York and Los Angeles, faced delays in transitioning or had not fully adopted NIBRS, leading to gaps in 
national crime statistics.

Data Incompleteness:
This voluntary nature and the transition's complexity resulted in a noticeable drop in the number of agencies 
reporting. For instance, discussions on platforms like X highlighted that nearly a third of American cities might not 
have reported crime statistics in the initial years of this shift.

Impact on Data Continuity and Accuracy:

Break in Data:

There's effectively a break or at least a significant inconsistency in data continuity. This means comparing crime 
statistics pre- and post-2021 might not reflect real changes in crime rates but rather changes in reporting mechanisms.


The system that is in place now, wasn't in place when Trump was President, or did pansy-ass pussy not know this?

Know what the fuck you're talking about, moron.

=====

4 Reasons We Should Worry About Missing Crime Data 

The FBI'S Crime Data Is Still Incomplete - And Politicians Are Taking Advantage

For more than 100 years, the FBI has been collecting crime data from local police departments across the country 
through the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which has been the gold standard of national crime statistics.

By 2020, almost every law enforcement agency was included in the FBI's database. Some agencies reported top-line 
numbers, such as the total number of murders or car thefts, through the Summary Reporting System. Others reported 
granular incident data with details about each reported crime through the newer National Incident-Based Reporting 
System (NIBRS).

THEN IT ALL CHANGED IN 2021.

WAS Trump President in 2021?

In an effort to fully modernize the system, the FBI stopped taking data from the old summary system and only accepted 
data through the new system. Thousands of police agencies fell through the cracks because they didn't catch up with the 
changes on time.

The Marshall Project is tracking police agency participation using data obtained from the FBI. Here are four takeaways 
from our analysis.

More than 6,000 law enforcement agencies were missing from the FBI's national crime data last year, representing nearly 
one-third of the nation's 18,000 police agencies. This means a quarter of the U.S. population wasn't represented in the 
federal crime data last year, according to The Marshall Project's analysis.

The old summary-level data reporting system, retired in 2021, was also revived last year when the FBI announced that it 
would accept data through it again. It's unclear how many police agencies took advantage of the opportunity because the 
participation data is not available yet. But many states, like Illinois, had already planned to phase out the old 
system.

Reporting has increased compared with 2021, the first year the FBI changed the collection system, with 2,000 more 
police agencies submitting their 2022 crime records. But the data gap still creates significant challenges for scholars 
and policymakers to make sense of crime trends.
Many of the largest police departments, like the NYPD and LAPD, are still missing.

Some large police departments began to report data to the FBI again in 2022, like the Miami-Dade Police Department. But 
the two largest police agencies in the U.S., the New York Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Department, are 
still missing in the federal data.

A spokesperson from the LAPD said the department submitted crime data to the California Department of Justice using the 
old data collections system, but is still working on complying with the FBI's new record standards. "The intent is to 
have it implemented by January 1, 2024 as part of the rollout of the new system," the spokesperson said.

An NYPD spokesperson said the department is currently collecting crime data in compliance with the new system. "We 
anticipate that the agency will be NIBRS-certified in the very near future," the spokesperson said, but didn't offer a 
specific timeline.

Many large police agencies still missing from national crime data

Of the 19 biggest law enforcement agencies - each of which police more than 1 million people - seven were missing from 
the FBI's 2022 crime data. The missing agencies include the LAPD, the NYPD, and police departments in Phoenix, San Jose 
and New York's Suffolk County. 

Agency20212022
New York Police Department, N.Y.No reportingNo reporting
Los Angeles Police Department, Calif.No reportingNo reporting
Chicago Police Department, Ill.Reported 7 monthsFull reporting
Houston Police Department, TexasFull reportingFull reporting
Harris County Sheriff's Office, TexasFull reportingFull reporting
Phoenix Police Department, Ariz.Reported 1 monthNo reporting
Las Vegas Metro Police Department, Nev.Full reportingFull reporting
Philadelphia Police Department, Pa.Reported 9 monthsFull reporting
San Antonio Police Department, TexasFull reportingFull reporting
San Diego Police Department, Calif.Full reportingFull reporting
Dallas Police Department, TexasFull reportingFull reporting
Suffolk County Police Department, N.Y.No reportingNo reporting
Miami-Dade County Police Department,Fl.No reportingFull reporting
Fairfax County Police Department, Va.Reported 11 monthsFull reporting
Nassau County Police Department, N.Y.No reportingNo reporting
Montgomery County Police Department, Md.Full reportingReported 2 months
San Jose Police Department, Calif.No reportingNo reporting
Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office,Fl.No reportingNo reporting
Austin Police Department, TexasFull reportingFull reporting

Source: Agency participation data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Feb. 6, 2023, which was the 
deadline for local agencies to submit crime data for the Q4 2022 quarterly report. Local agencies had until April 3, 
2023 to submit data for the FBI's 2022 national crime report, so the final participation status may change. 

Less than 10% of agencies in Florida and Pennsylvania are available in the national crime data, but many states have 
near-perfect submission rates.

Most police agencies do not submit data directly to the FBI. Instead, a police agency usually submits crime data to the 
state's law enforcement department, which acts as a data clearinghouse. The state agency then submits data from all the 
agencies to the FBI.

In 2021, California and Florida were the only two states that were not certified with the FBI's new data collection 
system on time, which meant neither state could submit any data at all by the FBI's deadline. Starting in 2022, both 
states were certified to submit crime data through the FBI's new system.

After both states began submitting data, nearly 400 California police agencies were included in the FBI's crime data 
last year, which represents half of the state's agencies. This was a significant jump from 2021, when only a handful of 
agencies in California that directly submitted their records to the FBI were in the federal database.

In Florida, however, only 49 of the state's more than 500 agencies submitted data to the FBI last year, representing 
less than 8% of the state's police departments. Some of the largest agencies, like the Miami Police Department, the 
Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, and the St. Petersburg Police Department, are missing from the national context.

While Florida agencies had the lowest participation rate in the federal crime data, Pennsylvania is a close second, 
with more than 90% of the state's police agencies missing.

That's followed by New York State, where three-quarters of the agencies were missing from the federal database. That 
includes the three police agencies in the state that had more than 1 million people in their jurisdiction: New York 
Police Department, the Suffolk County Police Department, and the Nassau County Police Department.

On the other hand, 17 states were ahead of the curve and had nearly perfect participation in the FBI's crime data.
The patchy crime data has real consequences.

Over the last year, the patchy national crime statistics have led to confusion and uncertainty.

When the FBI released its 2021 national crime data last fall, it couldn't say if crime went up, went down, or stayed 
the same. The FBI concluded that all three scenarios could be possible because of the gaps in the data collection.

The data issues affected hate crime statistics as well. When the FBI first unveiled the hate crime numbers, it looked 
like they had dropped significantly. But the report missed hate crimes from nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies in 
the country, and the agency faced outcry from experts and policymakers who said the numbers were "worse than 
meaningless."

The FBI later went back to more than 7,000 police departments that didn't supply hate crime data, and asked them to 
submit their numbers through the old data collection system that was supposed to be retired. When the FBI released a 
new hate crime report this spring with more data, it showed a nearly 12% increase in hate crimes from 2020 to 2021.

In June, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his presidential campaign, he bragged about Florida's crime rate 
hitting a 50-year low in 2021. But his statement relied on incomplete data - more than 40% of the state's population 
was missing from Florida's state-level crime data in 2021, as many police departments were transitioning their record 
management system to the FBI's new standards.

In Wichita, the incumbent Mayor, Brandon Whipple, used faulty crime statistics in his bid for re-election earlier this 
summer. Using data from the FBI's Crime Data Explorer, Whipple claimed that violent crime had been reduced by half 
during his administration. But the reality was the FBI's data missed half of the violent crime that the Wichita Police 
Department recorded, a confusion caused by the police department's attempt to transition its crime data reporting 
system, the Wichita Eagle first reported.

As many police departments are still in the process of complying with the FBI's new reporting requirements, experts 
predict that the national crime data is likely to be incomplete for years to come, and will leave more room to 
politicize crime statistics without concrete evidence. These issues are likely to become more urgent as the country 
moves closer to another election cycle where crime is certain to be a potent issue: In 2024, the FBI is likely to 
release its national crime data just before the election.

"People will use crime data to say whatever they want," said Jeff Asher, a criminologist and co-founder of AH 
Datalytics. "When you don't have that certainty of having nearly every agency reporting data, it means that you need a 
lot of literacy to be able to combat items that are being stated in bad faith."