Houston Mayor John Whitmire said today that he believes the city’s crime data has been manipulated for nearly a decade, but vowed to get to the bottom of whoever is responsible. He also vows to solve this problem.
The mayor’s statement echoes the findings of the KPRC2 investigation report a week ago.
Although he did not go into details, some of our research shows significant inconsistencies with serious crimes such as rape and murder.
At a press conference, Mayor Whitmire announced the members of a new independent review board that will be responsible for collecting the data.
He did not mince words about the discovery of inaccurate reporting about crimes that have affected thousands of potential victims in the city over the past eight years.
“First of all, I would like to apologize to the victims,” Whitmire said. “The City of Houston has let down eight years of administration under four police chiefs. This unfair coding of incidents and suspensions due to understaffing was a terrible mistake.”
Whitmire’s exact findings are unclear, but KPRC2 investigative reporter Mario Diaz found last week that the Houston Police Department’s crime statistics don’t match those from the FBI-managed National Incident-Based Reporting System. revealed.
For example, in terms of rape and sexual assault cases in 2022, NIBRS shows 1,140 cases, while HPD reports 1,264 cases. That’s 124 more people than federal figures show.
At the same time, NIBRS has 17,459 aggravated assault cases in 2022 and HPD has 15,030. That’s 2,429 fewer cases than federal statistics show.
“We believe previous statements by the city of Houston are credible.”[how] “The crime was going in the right direction,” Whitmire said. “That turned out to be a misconception.” “There are flaws in the reliability of the data that HPD has collected and made available to the public for at least the past eight years,” Whitmire said.
We reached out to the last mayor, Sylvester Turner, but he said he was not interested in talking about the issue. We also reached out to HPD, but a spokesperson said they were unable to respond at this time. I then contacted the Houston Police Officers Union and was told that two representatives would comment, but they were not available today.
Whitmire, meanwhile, vows to investigate, review and fix what he called deeply broken elements of the local criminal justice system.
“It’s impacting victims, it’s impacting police morale, it’s impacting holding people accountable for their actions,” Whitmire said.
After the press conference, we contacted the mayor’s office again to ask who they thought was responsible for this issue. Spokespeople who work for this administration, and the last one, told me that the answer turns out to be part of the investigation.
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