[Scan-DC] Statistics

[Frank Carson]

BINGO!!  The "Official Crime Statistics" that most agencies report are based
upon the "Uniform Crime Reporting" standards.  It's a federal thing<g>.  The
agency collects and assembles crime stats and forwards it to the State, who
then compile the data and send it on up to the Feds to be included in the
nationwide reports.  The Agency is only required to report offenses that
were handled by that Agency under their ORI number (all departments
nationwide have unique ORI numbers).  If the County has municipalities which
have their own police department THAT municipality is required to report
their own UCR Stats seperately.  For example, the Prince George's County
Police DO NOT report Hyattsville City's robberies, etc.  Since Hyattsville
City has their own police department Hyattsville City reports THEIR OWN
robberies, etc. That's how it works.

Frank Carson

PS I worked on UCR stats for my agency for awhile.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Rigby" <srigby at smart.net>
To: "Scan-DC" <scan-dc at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 9:16 PM
Subject: [Scan-DC] Statistics


>    I post this information strictly as a "For What It Is Worth" item
> because I think it is interesting and informative.
>
>    After having a discussion with an editor of a newspaper located in
> Fairfax County, a county supervisor and having a couple of subsequent
> correspondences with the Fairfax County Police Chief, I can make the
> following observation in all honesty.  When the FCPD releases
> statistics and incident figures to the public, those figures do not
> represent all such incidents that have taken place in the county, even
> though they are claimed to represent such.  By this I mean that, for
> instance, statistics on the number of bank robberies "in Fairfax
> County" really means only those robberies wherein the FCPD was the
> primary responder.
>
>    In FCPD "speak," the term "in the county," or "within the county"
> does not mean what is said, even though those terms are used by the
> FCPD and the county government in the dissemination of information to
> the public.  Such terms actually mean what I stated in the last
> sentence of the previous paragraph.
>
>    Any incidents that take place in the county wherein the FCPD did not
> have the role as primary responder are not included in figures for
> incidents that occurred "in the county."  This includes anything that
> takes place in any of the towns or cities in the county, and also
> includes incidents that take place in other areas such as Ft. Belvoir
> or in areas associated with Dulles Airport as well as other unspecified
> areas of the county.
>
>    The Chief stated the obvious, that being that the language used by
> the FCPD in reporting crime and incident figures and statistics can, in
> his own words, "...be
> easily misinterpreted."
>
>    There apparently is no entity of the county government that compiles
> statistics and figures for the county as a whole, and all such figures
> and statistics as released by the county government follow the
> guidelines already described.
>
>    The result of this policy is clearly going to result in figures that
> are considerably lower than if the term "in the county" really meant
> "in the county."
>
>    Steve
>
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