Crime Statistics

Police Commissioner Willie L. Williams yesterday defended preliminary statistics indicating that major crimes in Philadelphia fell substantially during the first half of 1991. "I find it personally offensive that people would indicate there is a deliberate and concerted effort to keep crime statistics down," Williams said. "I take personal and professional exception to people who indicate there is some concerted effort to do so. If people have some information, I encourage them to bring it forward.

The Borough of Rutledge has such a low crime rate it doesn't even merit a percentage point on state crime statistics, according to the state. Rutledge Mayor Don McKinney told council members at this week's regular meeting that the borough has tallied only 93 criminal complaints for the entire year. The statewide average, he said, is 580 calls per 1,000 residents. "We don't even register on the scales," he said, "not that I'm complaining. " To illustrate the borough's low crime rate, McKinney read off the police report for the month of May: one theft, one domestic fight, five traffic arrests and 22 tickets for speeding and other traffic offenses.

Kathleen Milczarek knows how to stay out of trouble in Center City. She stays underground. Every morning, she takes public transportation from her home in Fox Chase to Center City. Once there, she makes her way through the underground concourse near City Hall to her office in the Municipal Services Building, where she works as a secretary. Every afternoon, she does the trip in reverse. That way, she never has to be on the city streets she finds so threatening. "I wouldn't feel comfortable," she says, "because of the stigma of Center City.

A Philadelphia police captain who had reported a drop in crime in his West Philadelphia district was transferred out of his job Friday after a police review questioned the validity of his crime statistics. Capt. Daniel Castro, 34, was moved out of the 16th District, where he had worked since October 1997, and reassigned to night work with the command inspections bureau. Through a spokeswoman, Police Commissioner John Timoney called the move an "internal matter. " Thomas Walsh, who had worked in command inspections, was named the new captain.

Persisting in an endeavor to purge the city of inaccurate crime statistics and the cops who compile them, Police Commissioner John Timoney has reassigned a veteran commander to the Command Inspections Bureau at police headquarters. For 47-year-old Capt. Gerard Levins, once the captain of a high-profile, low-crime district in the Northeast and the second captain in two months to be transferred for undercounting crimes, it means the months ahead will be spent working nights. The department has a recent history of crime-counting snafus.

For the second time in less than two months, a Philadelphia police captain has been stripped of his command after department investigators questioned the accuracy of crime statistics for his district. Capt. Gerard Levins, 47, lost his post as commander of the Second Police District in Northeast Philadelphia, the department announced Friday. Tomorrow, he is to begin working nights as a commander at Police Headquarters. The transfer does not affect Levins' rank. The action by Police Commissioner John F. Timoney comes two weeks after he declared that he had no confidence in the crime statistics given him for Philadelphia for this year.

Responding to growing evidence that Philadelphia police have been underreporting crime, the City Controller's Office soon will begin an independent audit in an effort to determine the extent of the problem and restore public confidence in the statistics. The Controller's Office has audited aspects of police performance, such as spending on the 911 system, but it has never examined the city's overall system for counting crime. Controller Jonathan A. Saidel, who met with Police Commissioner John F. Timoney last week to discuss the audit, said yesterday that he had ordered the review because of widespread public doubt about official crime figures.

For the first time, the City Controller's Office is auditing police crime figures. Soon, the Police Department will begin using sting tactics on its own officers, having undercover investigators pose as crime victims to see whether police report the incidents properly. Now, the Justice Department is starting an inquiry into the fudging of crime statistics in the nation's fifth-largest city. Rarely if ever has there been so much pressure on Philadelphia police to present an accurate picture of crime.

Last month, Camden was labeled the "most dangerous city in America" for the second consecutive year, based on rankings by Morgan Quitno Press. Because the rankings were derived from 2004 Uniform Crime Reporting data given to the FBI by police departments, local officials criticized them for not reflecting improvements made in 2005. Those improvements will be factored into next year's rankings, and it is too early to tell where Camden will fall on that list. The FBI, meanwhile, cautions against using Uniform Crime Reporting data to rank cities because "they provide no insight into the many variables that mold the crime in a particular town, city, county, state, or region.

So there's this cop up in the 14th District, see, and he goes to investigate the theft of a cell phone. What's he do? He calls the number. And - can you believe this? - the knucklehead answers. The cop pretends he's the owner. Tells the thief: "Hey, this phone really likes me. Will you take $50 for it?" Sure enough, the guy agrees, they meet. Bingo! An arrest. Captain Joseph Marker told that story yesterday, and the assembled brass roared. "But here's why I wanted to tell you this," Marker said.

Pennsylvania State University officials should have blown the whistle on former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's child sexual assaults, with or without the mandate of a federal law that requires reporting any serious crime that occurs on a college campus. Had school administrators put a higher priority on complying with the Clery Act, however, they likely wouldn't be in trouble now for their gross mishandling of the Sandusky allegations. Indeed, the scathing report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh that brought down legendary coach Joe Paterno pointed to shortcomings in the university's compliance with the federal law as "a contributing factor" in failing to unmask Sandusky, who was convicted in June by a Centre County Court jury of sexually assaulting 10 boys.

The 39-year-old man shot to death in Chester on Thursday was the city's fifth homicide victim of 2012, and another sign that Delaware County's most beleaguered community can be a dangerous place. "Your chances of being a victim of violence while living in Chester are astronomically higher than if you live in Philadelphia," said Andrew Schiller, founder of Location Inc., a data-mining firm that markets to real estate companies and that last month listed Chester as the country's second-most dangerous city.

NEGOTIATORS for SEPTA and transit police are to meet for a second straight day of bargaining Thursday, after three hours of talks Wednesday. The strike by 219 transit police enters its eighth day Thursday. Meanwhile, as negotiators met privately at the Ballard Spahr law firm that assists SEPTA in labor talks, the transit agency and its police traded accusations over the strike's effect on public safety. SEPTA challenged claims by the striking cops that crimes have increased at SEPTA stations and vehicles during the strike.

Despite a grinding recession, reported crime in the United States continues to fall, the FBI said Monday. Violent crime was down 6 percent in 2010 - the fourth consecutive yearly decline, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. Property crime dropped for the eighth year in a row, down 2.7 percent in 2010. In Pennsylvania, violent crime fell 3 percent and property crime ticked down 0.5 percent. New Jersey and Delaware reported small drops in violent crime, but increases in property crime.

ACCORDING to crime statistics, there have been more than 128,000 murders in the U.S. since the Iraq war began in 2003. That's an average of more than 16,000 a year. In that same period, the number of our soldiers killed in Iraq: 4,454. (By comparison, the number of service members killed in the six-month naval and ground fighting during World War II at Guadalcanal - 7,100 - in one battle.) I understand that every life is precious, but when men and women voluntarily raise their hand and swear to do whatever it takes to protect this country, including dying, why does that relatively small number of deaths get more attention than the number of people whose lives were taken from them right in front of our eyes?

WASHINGTON - It was a dramatic scene, even for Congress: Three Peace Corps volunteers raped while serving overseas, plus the mother of a fourth who was murdered in Benin, complaining to lawmakers about one of the government's most revered agencies. Their theme was similar: The Peace Corps, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, did little to train its workers about how to avoid or deal with violent attacks. And it reacted insensitively and unhelpfully in the aftermath of the crimes, they said.

As a teen, Craig R. McCoy read I.F. Stone's Weekly, a little publication acclaimed for challenging the power of government. McCoy's father, a political science professor, subscribed to Stone's muckraking newsletter to find out the truth behind the official version. Recently, McCoy, now an investigative reporter at The Inquirer, got a call from Robert H. Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, informing him that he had been awarded the 2010 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence.

Philadelphia saw across-the-board decreases in major crimes over the last two years, authorities announced yesterday, including a 22 percent drop in homicides. "These are, of course, spectacular achievements," Mayor Nutter said yesterday at a news conference held at the 22d Police District. "And we will celebrate them for about a second. Our work is not done. We cannot rest. We must be a safer city. " Flanked by Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, newly sworn-in District Attorney Seth Williams, and other law enforcement authorities, Nutter said the Police Department and Ramsey were to be praised for the progress made in reducing crime.

IHARDLY READ the papers anymore. It's just too depressing. It's hard to keep an optimistic view of my daughter's future in mind when it's so rare to read or hear anything upbeat or kind in the papers or on TV. We focus so much on the crime statistics we can sometimes forget that there are still wonderful caring individuals still left among us. People who give without wanting something in return. But on Oct. 5, my husband met three such people, and he doesn't even know their names.