The report found that Chicago Police officers “incorrectly classified 3.1 percent of 2012 assault-related events contained in incident reports.” For example, the victim and offender were former roommates in one case. Due to their relationship, the correct code for the incident was “domestic simple battery,” but the officer coded the incident as a “simple battery.”
The 3.1 percent error rate was under the 10 percent error rate that the FBI states is acceptable for agencies participating in its national reporting program, according to the inspector general.
“The integrity and reliability of crime statistics used for those purposes hinges on two features — the accuracy of incident reporting from the field and the accuracy of the classification and reporting of that information once entered into the system,” Inspector General Joe Ferguson said in a prepared statement.
“CPD’s robust response to the problems the audit revealed is an encouraging sign of an organization seeking to improve,” he said. “We caution, however, that what is reported out is only as reliable as what is fed into the system from the field. Public confidence in crime statistics therefore also depends on the accuracy of field reporting, which we did not test.”
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