Crime Report Manipulation Is Common Among New York Police

Crime Report Manipulation Name Professor Date Introduction In the United States, the largest municipal police force is the City of New York Police Department commonly known as the New York City Police Department or NYPD. It is one of the oldest police departments in the U.S having been established in 1845. The agency's primary responsibilities are law enforcement and crime investigation in the five boroughs of New York City. The NYPD has a comprehensive range of specialized facilities including a harbor patrol, bomb disposal, criminal intelligence, narcotics, the Emergency service Unit and public transport and housing among others. The compstat system of management which is widely established in other cities in America was developed by the NYPD in the 1990s. NYPD, jointly with Microsoft runs a Domain Awareness System that links 6,000 closed-circuited television cameras, license plate reader and other surveillance devices into a unified system. The department's mission is to enforce the law, preserve the peace, reduce fear, and provide a safe environment. But despite a well-elaborated mission, crime report manipulation is common among the agency, and this has an adverse impact on crime-ridden areas of New York. With the introduction of the compstat system of analyzing data at the NYPD, commanding officers started filling the pressure on them from their superiors to reduce the rates of crimes in their areas of jurisdiction. For that reason, reducing crime rates was a priority that all commanding officers wanted to achieve, and this was the beginning of crime report manipulation. Manipulation occurs in different forms. Sometimes crimes are erased from official documents; victims are advised of filing charges, or severe crimes are recorded as either mistaken or minor crimes. Assault cases recorded as harassment, robbery as grand larceny, grand larceny as petit larceny while burglary is recorded as criminal trespass. Also, there are cases where burglaries that occur in an apartment building are counted as one (Rudermanjuene, 2012). Crime report manipulation affects the police force and the NYPD at large, victims of crime and citizens of the city. It also has an impact on crime-ridden areas of New York City. The national government evaluates the security of all cities and using false crime statistics will have an effect in one way or another. When crime rates are low in a particular area, it is evident that this field is likely to get few law-enforcement officers deployment (Eterno, & Silverman, 2012). First, deploying few police officers or detectives to a city that is assumed to be safe while in reality is not is that the workforce will not manage to keep the population safe. The ratio of one police to a civilian will increase, and this will endanger the society. Secondly, when there is a shortage of police officers or detectives in crime-ridden areas of New York City, it will lead to slow reaction or flow of intelligence on organized gangs or crimes in progress. With enough police officers, the circulation of information is quick, and the response is fast, and this may lead to stopping crimes in the progress of raiding organized ...