ST. LOUIS 鈥 Another round of technical problems in the city police department caused the FBI to publish artificially low crime totals for the city for the second time in less than a year.
狐狸视频 police say problems in its records system prevented them from sending crime data to the state, as required by Missouri law, for more than three months, leading the FBI to mistakenly publish incomplete crime numbers for the city in its first-quarter national report this year.
The bureau acknowledged the error after a Post-Dispatch review of local, state and FBI data found the national report鈥檚 totals for 狐狸视频 were too low.
鈥淲e have been candid about the issues surrounding our ability/inability to successfully transmit data,鈥 said 狐狸视频 police Sgt. Charles Wall in an email. The department worked with Optimum Technology, the vendor that maintains its records system, to resolve the problems, he said.
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狐狸视频鈥 outage and the FBI鈥檚 mistake are the latest setbacks as police here and across the U.S. transition to a different way of tracking crime called the National Incident-Based Reporting System. A longer data interruption here last year led the FBI to publish misleading annual totals for 狐狸视频, derived from just 11 months of data, in its major crime publications for 2021.
The change to NIBRS was intended to give a more complete picture of crime across the country by capturing greater detail on incidents, victims and offenders. But police agencies have struggled to make the switch, leaving enormous gaps in the data-gathering effort.
The technical problems in 狐狸视频 lasted more than three months beginning in April and kept the city from reporting some data from the first three months of 2023. The city resumed data submissions in July.
Wall noted that while the city could not submit detailed data to the state, which sends it on to the FBI, it never stopped posting for the public to see.
The FBI said in a statement that it is 鈥渨orking to develop additional algorithms against the publication tables to detect this type of anomaly,鈥 and that it would update future reports with corrected data once the system issues are resolved.
Repeat failure
The latest failure comes after the FBI made similar assurances last October in response to a Post-Dispatch report on a similar pattern: 狐狸视频鈥 delayed data submissions led to errors in the bureau鈥檚 annual crime publications.
That time, 狐狸视频 police stopped reporting crime data to the state for eight months beginning in December 2021. A flaw in the FBI鈥檚 systems led the bureau to wrongly count 狐狸视频 as having reported a full year of crime data for 2021 when it had only reported 11 months鈥 worth.
The bureau then ran those incomplete totals for 狐狸视频 in its 鈥淐rime in the United States鈥 and 鈥淣ational Incident-Based Reporting System鈥 , when the city should have been excluded entirely.
And those artificially low annual totals are permanently enshrined, as the FBI doesn鈥檛 correct mistakes in its annual publications after they are released.
In contrast, the FBI鈥檚 flawed first-quarter report for this year has already been replaced with the second quarter鈥檚 data 鈥 which correctly excludes 狐狸视频 because the city failed to submit some data in the second quarter, too.
This short shelf life is by design. The is a relatively new tool, introduced in 2020. It is published quickly with minimal auditing, to give the public access to preliminary national data ahead of the bureau鈥檚 larger annual publications.
But data analyst Jeff Asher . For the fourth quarter of 2022, he found that the FBI gave much lower murder totals for Dallas, Cincinnati, Columbus, Ohio, and Memphis, Tennessee, than the agencies reported themselves in other publications.
鈥淭he quarterly data is mostly useless,鈥 said Asher, cofounder of AH Datalytics, a consulting firm that tracks crime data for cities across the U.S.
鈥楾he most basic question鈥
For years, police departments across the country have been upgrading their records systems to begin using the new, more detailed NIBRS format for reporting crime data. The FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics provided $120 million in federal funding to help departments make the transition, including a $1.2 million grant for 狐狸视频 to implement a new records system.
But the transition remains rocky.
That became evident after 2021, when the FBI stopped accepting data in the old 鈥渟ummary鈥 format, and required agencies to use NIBRS. That year, more than 7,000 of nearly 19,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide failed to submit any crime data at all, and only 52% submitted a full year鈥檚 worth 鈥 .
With data missing or incomplete for so many agencies 鈥 including New York City 鈥 the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics were forced to use 鈥渨ell-established estimation techniques鈥 to fill in the gaps in the 2021 national report, and they cautioned against comparing the 2021 data with previous years.
Researchers bemoaned the lack of clarity on national crime trends, especially as political rhetoric on crime heated up ahead of last year鈥檚 mid-term elections.
However, participation has been improving slowly since then.
鈥淐rime remains a hot political issue, but the FBI鈥檚 data for 2022 will be more reliable than the 2021 data,鈥 said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri-狐狸视频.
The bureau鈥檚 national crime publications for 2022 are likely to be released later this month. The data in them will be based on a higher agency participation rate, 78%, than in 2021, Rosenfeld said, but some estimation will still be necessary.
Participation is much higher in Missouri, where data collection is not voluntary. By Sept. 26, 529 departments here, covering 98.6% of the state鈥檚 population, were submitting data in the NIBRS format, according to the state Department of Public Safety.
State law requires police agencies to submit uniform crime reports to the Highway Patrol, which then forwards the data to the FBI. Missouri鈥檚 Department of Public Safety, which oversees the effort, considers agencies out of compliance when they fail to submit crime data for at least three months.
Agencies that fall out of compliance may be ineligible for state and federal grants. But that didn鈥檛 happen last year in 狐狸视频.
The Department of Public Safety awarded the city two grants last summer worth more than $110,000, even as 狐狸视频 was at least six months behind in reporting crime data. It鈥檚 not clear yet if 狐狸视频 has faced any grant withholdings this year.
鈥楽ignificant growing pains鈥
In 狐狸视频, 鈥渢here have been significant growing pains鈥 as the department switched to a new records system in order to adopt NIBRS, said Wall, the police spokesman. He noted the department weathered similar issues 20 years ago during another technology change.
狐狸视频鈥 most recent delay began on April 5. When the department uploaded its March 2023 data, it 鈥渞eceived a FAIL from the State site,鈥 according to an email to Subashini Arrib, a project manager at Optimum Technology, written by Jerry Baumgartner, the department鈥檚 planning and research manager, and obtained through a records request.
Internal status reports starting the first week of April, also obtained in a records request, show the department considered the performance of the records management system and other problems to be 鈥渕ajor issues鈥 for months.
Asked if 狐狸视频 was concerned or dissatisfied with Optimum Technology, the vendor implementing the new records system, Wall said the department continues to work with them and was 鈥渃onfident that any issues that may arise in the future will be addressed more expeditiously.鈥
狐狸视频 seems to be the only department of its size in Missouri to have had extended, multi-month interruptions. Police departments in both Kansas City and 狐狸视频 County have continuously reported crime data without stopping for longer than four weeks since they obtained certification for their new systems from the Highway Patrol in recent years, spokesmen for both departments confirmed.
Kansas City uses a records system from Niche Technology that launched in 2019. 狐狸视频 County uses its own homegrown system, CARE, which it upgraded with a to become NIBRS compliant.
Even among dozens of much smaller departments across 狐狸视频 County, such interruptions are rare. On Sept. 1, only four 鈥 Calverton Park, Hillsdale, Northwoods and Warson Woods 鈥 were more than three months behind in reporting, according to a Post-Dispatch analysis of data from the Highway Patrol.
Northwoods and Warson Woods each blamed the interruptions on hardware and software upgrades that were underway. Calverton Park Chief Scott Amos said his department had been uploading data to the Highway Patrol, but a problem with the patrol鈥檚 system had kept the data from displaying on its crime portal.
Since then, Northwoods and Warson Woods have caught up, and data for Calverton Park has begun to appear on the state website.
Hillsdale police did not respond to questions from the Post-Dispatch.