Follow-Up on CPD Assault-Related Crime Statistics

Executive Summary

The City of Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) has completed a follow-up to its April 2014 audit of the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) classification and summary reporting for assault-related crimes in 2012. OIG concludes that CPD has implemented corrective actions related to the original audit findings.

The purpose of the 2014 audit was to determine if CPD accurately,

• classified assault-related crimes under CPD guidelines; and
• reported crime statistics in CompStat reports and Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting (IUCR) submissions.

The audit found that CPD reported all required assault-related incidents in CompStat reports, but misclassified 3.1% of assault-related incidents, which was under the 10% rate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation Criminal Justice Information Services (FBI/CJIS) stated was acceptable for agencies participating in the UCR program. We also found that CPD did not follow I-UCR rules, resulting in a 21% error rate in incident reporting and a 24% underreporting of victim offenses in the incidents sampled. Finally, we found that CPD incorrectly applied the I-UCR reporting rule regarding crimes against protected persons, thereby underreporting aggravated assaults and aggravated batteries to I-UCR by 5.7% and 3.2%, respectively.

Based upon those results, we recommended that CPD follow I-UCR guidelines for crimes against persons by counting each victim as a separate offense when reporting the number of offenses in its I-UCR submission to the State. We also recommended that CPD ensure all required incidents are included in future I-UCR submissions, including incidents which would remain aggravated regardless of the protected status of the victim, and that previous omissions of such incidents are corrected.

In March 2015, OIG inquired with CPD regarding the status of the corrective actions the Department committed to in response to OIG’s audit and any other actions it may have taken. On the following pages we have summarized the four original audit findings and recommendations, as well as the Department’s response to our follow-up inquiry.