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Wait a second: Who's 'vindicated' here?

GBI numbers muddy Harvard's claim that probe backs
her up

BY JESS SCHEER

As she announced the release of a Georgia Bureau of Investigation

audit of her department's crime-reporting techniques recently, Atlanta
Police Chief Beverly Harvard declared herself "vindicated" by the
report.

But a close reading of the document indicates that the report actually
affirmed many of the allegations raised by former-Deputy Chief Louis
Arcangeli, who began raising questions about the department's
reporting practices more than a year ago.

The audit -- the third report in seven years that found fault in the way
the city documents crimes -- matched at least one of Arcangeli's
charges nearly number-for-number. In May 1998, Arcangeli told the
City Council's Public Safety Committee that approximately 500
robberies had been handled incorrectly. The Georgia Bureau of
Investigation audit documented 498.

Also in May -- more than a year after he began writing letters to

Harvard about questionable crime statistics -- Arcangeli was demoted
to the rank of captain, resulting in an annual loss of almost $8,000 in
salary. The police department denies his demotion was a form of
retaliation.

"His reassignment and demotion had nothing to do with the audit that
came about or his allegations to anybody regarding those numbers,"
says officer John Quigley, spokesman for the Atlanta police
department. "Sometimes you change the players in your lineup. And
[Harvard] felt she had someone [else] that may offer more and was
going to give that person an opportunity."

Despite the audit's findings that police investigators failed to properly

document approximately one in 10 robberies in 1996, Harvard
heralded the report as overwhelmingly good news at a press
conference earlier this month.
"The report clearly vindicates the police department and the city in the
face of these clearly irresponsible allegations," she said. Arcangeli did
not hear her first hand -- he was ordered to leave the press conference
before it began.

Harvard also stressed that the audit did not find any criminal
wrongdoing -- although the GBI report clearly states that "this audit is
not a criminal investigation," and the agency confirms that its
investigators were never authorized to look for criminal acts or suggest
sanctions.

What the GBI did find was that, in at least 662 instances in 1996,
police officers incorrectly classified robbery, rape and motor vehicle
theft cases "unfounded" -- a classification used by the FBI's crime
reports to dismiss baseless allegations. The distinction is important to
city leaders because, when it comes time to rank Atlanta's crime
statistics, unfounded cases do not count.

Harvard says that the number of irregularities found by the GBI do not
have a statistically significant impact on the city's crime rate. She told
City Council's Public Safety Committee Jan. 12 that, even if all of the
unfounded cases questioned by the GBI were added to the city's
overall crime picture, Atlanta's drop in crime would have been 16.9
percent rather then 17.6 percent as was originally reported. She has
also noted that the audit found that the department properly classified
larceny-theft and homicide reports. "There was not a gross
underreporting" of those cases, she says.

But the GBI only investigated 20 percent of the city's crimes, so the
unfounded rate in the city's other crimes still is unknown. And
Harvard's cheery assessment is cold comfort to victims whose incident
reports were wiped clean in the city's alleged rush to close cases.
When that happens, the crime isn't investigated. And because police
didn't prove that a crime was committed, the victim might have a hard
time recovering an insurance claim.

To unfound a case, a detective has to sign a declaration that the

original charges could not be substantiated by the victim. But
according to the GBI's investigation, there was no evidence that
detectives attempted to contact the victim in 237 cases in 1996.

"There were instances in which an address/ telephone number was

available in the incident report, but no documentation of follow-up was
provided," the GBI audit revealed. It also found that "the phrase
'report unfounded until victim contacts the police department'
appeared with some frequency in the [rape] incident reports."

In a written response to the GBI dated Jan. 8, Harvard says "the vast
majority can be explained in terms of an honest misinterpretation of
[Universal Crime Reporting] guidelines" outlined in a 1977 FBI
memorandum. The FBI's one-page letter says cases may be unfounded
"providing your investigation cannot establish the offense actually
occurred."

But the Police Department had already been told in 1992 and 1994
that its practice of unfounding crimes was at odds with the UCR
guidelines.

A 1992 staff inspection of the department uncovered the prevalence of

prematurely ending investigations into crimes by dismissing the
charges as unfounded. At the time, Harvard was the deputy chief
responsible for entering all "clear-up reports" into the computer
system and performing a final review before forwarding the results to
the FBI.

"It was determined that investigators routinely unfound reports when

they cannot locate a victim. The Uniform Crime Reporting handbook
states, 'if the investigation shows that no offense occurred nor was
attempted the reported offense can be unfounded.' Not being able to
contact a victim is not within itself enough to unfound a report," the
1992 report states.

For at least 15 years, that has been the excuse heard by homeless
advocate Anita Beaty as to why homeless people who report crimes
aren't taken seriously. "When homeless people are harassed or
accosted, sometimes even physically assaulted, the police sometimes
don't take down the report," says Beaty, executive director of Metro
Atlanta's Task Force For The Homeless.

The 1992 study concluded that "if an outside agency were to

investigate the actual manner that clear-ups are being completed by
[the Central Investigation Division], I would expect them to describe it
as being a willful distortion of the actual crime picture in Atlanta. The
supervisors have allowed subordinates to wrongfully inflate the
clearance rate for years. Whether it is a willful act or an unconscious
one, this process must be corrected. A change must take place before
we are audited."
In 1994, then-Detective Vickye Prattis, now Sgt. Vickye Reese, raised
similar concerns.

"They were trying to force me to get the reports unfounded without

getting a hold of the victim," says Reese, a 24-year veteran of the
department. She says it is routine for detectives to be "threatened to
be transferred and put back in uniform" for not clearing cases fast
enough. Supervisors, she says, " would say 'go ahead and clear that
up, we've got too many open cases.' They would say that because
otherwise that case would be another stat."

Reese found the practice unacceptable: "If victims get assaulted, they
have the right to get help from us."

A 1994 GBI investigation -- ordered by then-Acting Chief Harvard --

was turned over to the Fulton County's district attorney's office. No
arrests resulted from the evidence gathered for the 1994 report.

In January 1997, then-Deputy Chief Arcangeli raised similar concerns,

writing to Harvard that "my staff informs me that in the first eleven
months of 1996 there have been 2,244 more crimes unfounded than in
the same time period of 1995." The result, the letter says, is a "43
percent increase in the number of crimes being removed from the
crime total."

The just-completed audit did not examine charges of aggravated

assault and burglary, which accounted for almost 19,000 crimes in
1996. When a similar study was conducted after questions were raised
about the Boca Raton, Fla., police department, investigators found that
the city had improperly downgraded about 10 percent of such crimes.

Police officials are still awaiting the results of two other investigations.
A follow-up audit by the GBI could occur within six months, and an
inquiry by City Council is also under way. Whatever happens, Rep.
Doug Teper, D-Atlanta, says he intends to introduce legislation that
would provide an incentive for municipalities to correctly report crime.

"It's been deja vu," sighs Reese, five years after she first raised
questions. "And I'm watching them again sweep it under the rug."