CMPD Fuzzy Math Crime Stats
Monroe has repeatedly and flatly denied any impropriety in how his department compiles crime statistics, attributing the steady reductions they reflect to structural changes he’s made within the department that have put more cops in the field, focused attention on repeat criminal offenders, and aggressively targeted hot spots of crime.
Yet there persist off-the-record rumblings from myriad police that the controversial, statistics-based management tool used heavily by Monroe encourages the manipulation of crime numbers to cast the department in a positive light. Police departments across the country, including CMPD, use Compstat – a data-driven management tool where command-level officers provide weekly crime statistics to department upper brass and discuss crime-fighting strategies based partly on the data.
The system, however, has come under fire from officers who contend the weekly meetings devolve into browbeating sessions where division commanders are pressured to produce low crime numbers, and are chastised and threatened if they don’t. That in turn, critics argue, has increasingly encouraged command officers to manipulate statistics to reflect artificially-low crime numbers.
The Baltimore Police Department, in fact, this week suspended its weekly comstat meetings, pending a review of the entire process after allegations that officers were being pressured into low-balling crime numbers. The Baltimore department’s move comes after a comprehensive study was released earlier this year, which showed more than 100 retired, high-ranking NYPD officers said the Compstat management system created pressure to manipulate crime numbers.
Again, Monroe has repeatedly said that isn’t happening in Charlotte. Yet there’s little denying that CMPD’s crime numbers, which grossly contradict the general perception of Queen City crime as reflected in a recent community survey, have provided Monroe with a buffer from criticism resulting from numerous controversies that have swamped CMPD under his command.
That’s a coincidence hard to ignore.
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