Police Manipulations of Crime Reporting: Insiders’ Revelations

Abstract

Social scientists have theorized about the corruption of crime reports (Bayley, 1983; Campbell, 1976). Yet, scant empirical research has examined the impact of modern policing methods on the accuracy of crime reporting. Our research uses an anonymous survey of 1,770 retired New York City police officers examining retirees’ experiences with crime report manipulations across their years of retirement. This includes retirees from the community policing as well as police performance management eras. We subject the data to various statistical tests including tabular analysis, graphical trends to visualize the data, MANOVA, and logistic regression to explain report manipulations. Results indicate that the misuse of the performance management system and pressures on officers from management are key explanations for manipulating crime reports. Individual explanatory variables such as gender, educational status, rank, race, and marital status had no effect. Our research supports Bayley’s and Campbell’s theories. We recommend greater transparency to remedy this.

Keywords:

• COMPSTAT
• performance management
• NYPD
• crime rates
• crime statistics

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John A. Eterno

John A. Eterno is professor, associate dean and director of Graduate Studies in Criminal Justice at Molloy College in Rockville Centre, New York. His research interests are democratic policing, police management, international law enforcement, human trafficking, investigations, and law—especially as it relates to policing. His publications include author/editor of four books, numerous book chapters and reports, and examples of his scholarly articles can be found in Justice Research and Policy, The Criminal Law Bulletin, Women and Criminal Justice, Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, The International Journal of Police Science and Management, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management.

Arvind Verma

Arvind Verma is on the faculty of the Dept of Criminal Justice, Indiana University, Bloomington. His research interests are in Policing: Criminal Justice Policy Issues, Indian Police, Research Methods, Mathematical Modeling, and Agent-Based Simulation. His recent publications include books titled Policing Muslim Communities: Comparative and International Context; The New Khaki: The Evolving Nature of Policing in India, Understanding the Police in India and recent journal articles, “Validating Distance Decay through Agent Based Modeling” and “Assessing the Role of Police in Containing Mob Violence.”

Eli B. Silverman

Eli B. Silverman, PhD, Professor Emeritus, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and  Graduate Center, City University of New York, served with the US Department of Justice and National Academy of Public Administration, Washington D. C and as exchange professor, Police Staff College in England. His areas of interest include: police performance management, community policing, policy analysis, stop and frisk, and compstat. Recent books: The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation and NYPD Battles Crime: Innovations in Policing.