What Crime?. Jeremy Kohler.
by Kohler, Jeremy; ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
Series: SIRS Enduring Issues 2006Article 62Institutions. Publisher: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2005ISSN: 1522-3256;.Subject(s): Criminal statistics | Memorandums | Police -- Records and correspondence | Police reports | Saint Louis (Mo.) | Victims of crimesDDC classification: 050 Summary: "Somebody is robbed in the city of St. Louis every three hours, on average. At least, that is what the official crime statistics suggest. Danielle Geekie's time came on a cold night last January [2004], as she walked along South Broadway....The gunman...took her purse, but not her life....Geekie, then 19, was a crime victim as defined by the FBI. She was a crime victim as defined by the St. Louis Police Department's policy. But the officers who responded the night of Jan. 12, 2004, decided otherwise and quietly invoked a process that arbitrarily discounted hundreds or more crime reports a year. Instead of writing an 'incident report' that triggers further investigation and gets counted in the city's crime totals, the officers opted for a 'Crime Memo Data Sheet' that generally languishes in a file drawer of a district station." (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH) This article investigates the St. Louis Police Department's use of crime memos, noting that "while the use of memos does not appear to be illegal, it clearly violates FBI standards for reporting crimes in a national compilation widely used for comparisons among cities" making "St. Louis appear safer than it is--both to its own residents and to outsiders."| Item type | Current location | Call number | Status | Date due |
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High School - old - to delete | REF SIRS 2006 Institutions Article 62 (Browse shelf) | Available |
Articles Contained in SIRS Enduring Issues 2006.
Originally Published: What Crime?, Jan. 16, 2005; pp. A1+.
"Somebody is robbed in the city of St. Louis every three hours, on average. At least, that is what the official crime statistics suggest. Danielle Geekie's time came on a cold night last January [2004], as she walked along South Broadway....The gunman...took her purse, but not her life....Geekie, then 19, was a crime victim as defined by the FBI. She was a crime victim as defined by the St. Louis Police Department's policy. But the officers who responded the night of Jan. 12, 2004, decided otherwise and quietly invoked a process that arbitrarily discounted hundreds or more crime reports a year. Instead of writing an 'incident report' that triggers further investigation and gets counted in the city's crime totals, the officers opted for a 'Crime Memo Data Sheet' that generally languishes in a file drawer of a district station." (ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH) This article investigates the St. Louis Police Department's use of crime memos, noting that "while the use of memos does not appear to be illegal, it clearly violates FBI standards for reporting crimes in a national compilation widely used for comparisons among cities" making "St. Louis appear safer than it is--both to its own residents and to outsiders."
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