The Chicago Crime Drop Fraud

[bmags]

It's taken me about a week to read this front to back. It is very hard to get through. Just pre-emptively, anyone that tries to throw out a "well of COURSE this was happening" can get a very large cookie. Congrats you are amazing, don't post in this thread.

 

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine...go-crime-rates/

 

The first part that made me stop because I couldn't go on (barely past the first paragraph):

 

The place lacked electricity, so crime scene technicians set up generators and portable lights. The power flickered on to reveal a grisly sight. In a small office, on soggy carpeting covered in broken ceiling tiles, lay a naked, lifeless woman. She had long red-streaked black hair and purple glitter nail polish on her left toenails (her right ones were gone), but beyond that it was hard to discern much. Her face and body were bloated and badly decomposed, her hands ash colored. Maggots feasted on her flesh.

 

At the woman’s feet, detectives found a curled strand of telephone wire. Draped over her right hand was a different kind of wire: thin and brown. The same brown wire was wrapped around each armrest of a wooden chair next to her.

 

The following day, July 24, a pathologist in the Cook County medical examiner’s office noticed something else that had been obscured by rotting skin: a thin gag tied around the corpse’s mouth.

 

Thanks to some still-visible tattoos, detectives soon identified this unfortunate woman: Tiara Groves, a 20-year-old from Austin. She was last seen walking alone in the wee hours of Sunday, July 14, near a liquor store two miles from the warehouse. At least eight witnesses who saw her that night told police a similar story: She appeared drunk and was upset—one man said that she was crying so hard she couldn’t catch her breath—but refused offers of help. A man who talked to her outside the liquor store said that Groves warned him, excitedly and incoherently, that he should stay away from her or else somebody (she didn’t say who) would kill him too.

 

Toxicology tests showed she had heroin and alcohol in her system, but not enough to kill her. All signs pointed to foul play. According to the young woman’s mother, who had filed a missing-person report, the police had no doubt. “When this detective came to my house, he said, ‘We found your daughter. . . . Your daughter has been murdered,’ ” Alice Groves recalls. “He told me they’re going to get the one that did it.”

 

On October 28, a pathologist ruled the death of Tiara Groves a homicide by “unspecified means.” This rare ruling means yes, somebody had killed Groves, but the pathologist couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause of death.

 

Given the finding of homicide—and the corroborating evidence at the crime scene—the Chicago Police Department should have counted Groves’s death as a murder. And it did. Until December 18. On that day, the police report indicates, a lieutenant overseeing the Groves case reclassified the homicide investigation as a noncriminal death investigation. In his writeup, he cited the medical examiner’s “inability to determine a cause of death.”

 

To be honest, this cuts way harder to me than the Chicago Police torture legacy. With one you have a complete perversion of the investigation process but still some attempt at solving a murder by pursuit. The white washing of a murder because they are the most invisible is just nausea-inducing.

 

This city. Another bloody weekend. And I wanted to believe it.

Edited April 15, 2014 by bmags

[Jake]

When I lived in Memphis, I remember hearing that part of the reason the city's crime rate looked so bad was because they reported absolutely everything. They found that doing so, while continuing to make the crime problem look serious, made it much easier to reduce serial offenses and to anticipate police needs.

[southsider2k5]

I remember this coming up in a conversation about something else. It is the least shocking thing ever that Chicago lies about their crime stats.

[iamshack]

I remember this coming up in a conversation about something else. It is the least shocking thing ever that Chicago lies about their crime stats.

You get a very large cookie.

[Y2HH]

There was a time I brought this very thing up in a random thread on this board and I was called crazy. I said then they toy with charges whenever possible in order to artificially lower crime statistics and as previously stated, I was called a loon.

[Texsox]

If you believe that this has been going on forever than a fair comparison of crime rates is possible. In other words, as long as you are under reporting at a similar rate, you can determine if rates are increasing or decreasing.

 

 

[southsider2k5]

If you believe that this has been going on forever than a fair comparison of crime rates is possible. In other words, as long as you are under reporting at a similar rate, you can determine if rates are increasing or decreasing.

 

I think it makes YoY comparisons tougher. I doubt that they are misreporting crimes at a steady rate. Usually a criminal gets more brazen in their activities, which is why they get caught. I would be willing to bet that cheating your crime stats isn't much different. It starts out with maybe a homeless guy that probably is a homicide, but no one cares, so we will just call it an "accidental death", because why waste the resources, right? Then after no one notices, maybe a little bit bigger re-categorization happens. Until eventually it becomes a routine thing.

[Jenksismyhero]

[Texsox]

I think it makes YoY comparisons tougher. I doubt that they are misreporting crimes at a steady rate. Usually a criminal gets more brazen in their activities, which is why they get caught. I would be willing to bet that cheating your crime stats isn't much different. It starts out with maybe a homeless guy that probably is a homicide, but no one cares, so we will just call it an "accidental death", because why waste the resources, right? Then after no one notices, maybe a little bit bigger re-categorization happens. Until eventually it becomes a routine thing.

 

You changed my mind. I agree with your assessment.

[cabiness42]

There has been an issue of this happening recently in Louisville. However, instead of underreporting crimes, the police were mis-locating crimes. There was an incident of major mob violence in a downtown park. People complained that this happened too often, but police data showed zero previous crime reports in the park. A local TV station did an investigation and found that crime reports from the park had their locations changed to nearby neighborhoods so that the city could tout a low crime rate in the park.

[LittleHurt05]

The unseasonably warm weather this weekend led to 35+ shootings. Damn you Mother Nature, it's all your fault!