Ald. Fioretti Calls for Transparency, Hearing on Chicago Police Crime Reporting Stats

Deborah Bayliss | As of Friday, July 18, 2014

2nd Ward Ald. Bob Fioretti.
2nd Ward Ald. Bob Fioretti.

Chicago's 2nd Ward Ald., Bob Fioretti, is calling for full transparency from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to avoid possible "downplaying" of the city’s crimes statistics.

When shootings occur in Chicago, news outlets report different and usually higher numbers than the CPD, as was the case this past the Fourth of July weekend.

Local and national news outlets reported at least 82 people shot with 14 of them fatally wounded. However, Chicago police News Affairs officers, Jose Estrada and, Janel Sedevic, who spoke with the Chicago Citizen Newspaper about the matter, 53 people were injured from being shot and nine people were killed as a result of gun violence for a total of 62 shootings.

When asked about the discrepancy, Sedevic and Estrada, told the Chicago Citizen Newspaper, the difference may be due to time frames that news outlets use.

“The Chicago Tribune for instance, counts Thursday as the start of the weekend and we use Friday as the start of the weekend and cut it off at midnight,” Sedevic told the Chicago Citizen Newspaper on Tuesday (July 15).

The police department did however, use Thursday (July 3) as the start of the weekend because of the Fourth of July holiday.

As for the number of shootings that occurred this past weekend, Officer Sedevic said from 6 p.m. Friday to Sunday (11:59) midnight, 3 people were murdered and 31 were injured.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported four people were killed and at least 29 others wounded in shootings across the city since Friday evening.

Ald. Fioretti spoke to the Chicago Citizen Newspaper on Tuesday saying the Chicago City Council Progressive Reform Coalition made of Ald. John Arena (45th Ward); Fioretti; Toni Foukes (15th Ward); Leslie Hairston (5th Ward); Ricardo Munoz (22nd Ward); Roderick T. Sawyer (6th Ward); Nick Sposato (36th Ward); and Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward), have been asking for a City Council hearing to "flush out" and make clear to the public exactly how the Chicago Police Department manages its crime reporting statistics.

“The Inspector General in April released a report about inaccurate crime reporting in Chicago and the Chicago Magazine published an investigative report, (parts of which are referred to in this report), in April that led us to call for the hearings,” Fioretti said. “If the public doesn’t trust the police, it’s difficult to keep the public safe. We’re hoping that a hearing will flush out what’s going on in terms of the reporting and are also hoping the two reporters who wrote the Chicago Magazine story will also testify about their findings.”

Fioretti said the second letter requesting a hearing was sent last week to 11th Ward Ald. James Balcer, chairman of the City Council Public Safety Committee but that he has not yet had a response.

When asked if he felt McCarthy should be removed as police superintendent, Fioretti said he has not reached that point yet but added that McCarthy and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel have the same views.

“One speaks for the other,” Fioretti said.

The 12-month Chicago Magazine examination of the Chicago Police Department’s crime statistics dates back several years and chronicles public and internal police records and interviews with crime victims, criminologists, and police sources of various ranks. Titled, The Truth About Chicago’s Crime Rates: The city’s drop in crime has been nothing short of miraculous, Here’s what’s behind the unbelievable numbers, by David Bernstein and Noah Isackson, the report identified 10 cases where people, who were beaten, burned, suffocated, or shot to death in 2013, were reclassified as death investigations, downgraded to more minor crimes, or even closed as noncriminal incidents—all for illogical or, at best, unclear reasons, the magazine report states.

According to the Chicago Magazine article, which was published in April 2014, the “troubling” practice goes far beyond murders, documents and interviews with dozens of other crimes, including serious felonies such as robberies, burglaries, and assaults, that were misclassified, downgraded to wrist-slap offenses, or made to vanish altogether.

The report also refers to occurrences where officers of different ranks and from different parts of the city recounted instances in which they were asked or pressured by their superiors to reclassify their incident reports or in which their reports were changed by some invisible hand. One detective refers to the “magic ink”: the power to make a case disappear. Says another: “The rank and file don’t agree with what’s going on. The powers that be are making the changes.”

Chicago’s crime wave has led at least one Ill. Rep. to call for McCarthy’s firing.

In an April 25 Chicago Reader news article, Ill. State Rep. Ken Dunkin is quoted saying, "The least the mayor could do is terminate Garry McCarthy immediately and get a superintendent who knows this city and is moving toward some strategies that will save it."

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