Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Audit: Atlanta Hedged Crimes in '96 Bid / Report On Crime and Crime Reporting in Atlanta:

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2004 18:08:14 -0500

Posted on Fri, Feb. 20, 2004

Audit: Atlanta Hedged Crimes in '96 Bid

MARK NIESSE
Associated Press

ATLANTA - Atlanta underreported crimes for years to help land the 1996
Olympics and pump up tourism, according to an audit commissioned by
police and released Friday.

Police in this relentlessly self-promoting city of the New South
routinely altered or suppressed thousands of crime reports in a
concerted effort "to improve Atlanta's chances for selection," the audit
said, citing interviews with several officers.
"Crime incidents were downgraded, underreported and discarded," the
report said.

The practice of underreporting crime began during the site-selection
process for the Olympics and continued until at least 2002, when Police
Chief Richard Pennington and Mayor Shirley Franklin took office, the
report said.

Pennington, who sought the audit, endorsed its findings and said he
would seek money to add more than 300 street officers to the
1,600-member police force to crack down on the drug trade.  He said 75
percent of violent crimes is tied to drugs.
"I don't want to alarm the citizens or have them think that when they
walk out on the streets, they're going to be mugged shot or robbed
because that's not the case," Pennington said. "The reason that I
brought this to light is to educate the public that there's a lot of
work to be done."

Atlanta officials have long nurtured the city's image as a
sophisticated, pro-business place. Calling itself "the city too busy to
hate," Atlanta came through the civil rights era with relatively little
violence because civic leaders feared trouble would be bad for business.

Despite the distorted figures, Atlanta ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in violent
crimes such as rape and murder in nine of the last 10 years, according
to FBI crime data, which is compiled from reports submitted by police
departments.
The audit was conducted by a New York consulting firm and paid for by
the Atlanta Police Foundation, which was formed to raise private money
to supplement the police department's budget.

The report concluded that many crime reports have been either
intentionally suppressed or lost through sloppy record-keeping. In 2002
alone, there were more than 22,000 missing police reports. Of those
crimes, 4,281 could have been counted as violent offenses but were not.

Pennington said he wants to improve accountability, upgrade technology
and increase officer pay by 40 percent. The mayor said she would work to
find about $25 million in the budget to pay for new hires and salary
increases.
Spurgeon Richardson, president of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors
Bureau, warned that the city needs to clean up crime or risk losing
lucrative convention business and corporate investment.

"The No. 1 item that meeting planners ask us to do is to be a safer
city," Richardson said. "We've all got to step forward to solve this
problem."

Georgia State University criminal justice professor Robert Friedmann
agreed that safety will influence business decisions.
"I've seen a business association that has come here for 20 years
questioning whether they will come back because the presenters have been
accosted downtown a number of times," he said.

ON THE NET
Audit: http://www.atlantapd.org

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/8000738.htm

Full Report On Crime and Crime Reporting in Atlanta:

                 http://www.linderandassociates.net/pdfs/atlanta_plan.pd

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