Austin is the only major Texas city which does not have statistics included in an FBI midyear report because police officials did not submit the data, citing a lack of personnel.Austin police spokeswoman Anna Sabana said Monday that departments are only required to submit crime data — the information is sent to the FBI through the Texas Department of Public Safety — for the annual report, which is generally made public each June.
Sabana said that verifying crime statistics before sending them to the FBI is an involved process and that the department hasn't been able to submit data for midyear reports because of "staffing cutbacks over the past eight years," Sabana said she did not know how many positions have been lost since then.
She said 2008 statistics will be given to the FBI by the deadline in early March.
Grits has previously discussed problems with Texas' crime reporting and that Travis County has the worst record in the state for reporting crime data.
And I've always thought that Austin/Travis County is the fount of all wisdom, cleanliness, holiness, Godliness, and all things clean and pure with an intellectual underpinning seen nowhere elase in the free world. My bubble is burst and all the city/county is is what I've always been told, The Evil Empire! Plus they have a whining - politiking football coach who has difficulty winning on the South Plains.
ReplyDeletePlato
"I've always thought that Austin/Travis County is the fount of all wisdom, cleanliness, holiness, Godliness, and all things clean and pure"
ReplyDeleteWhat this tells me, Plato, is that you have never watched even 30 seconds of an Austin City Council meeting, or you'd know better. ;)
Heard that Grits!
ReplyDeleteConcerning here is that at last check, violent crime in Austin was going up, while, from the recent JPI report, nationally, it went down in 2008. That would seem to provide extra impetus for APD to pay close attention/make proper reporting on this level...especially if they made staff changes or "cuts" (I'm attempting to clarify).
"Grits has previously discussed problems with Texas' crime reporting and that Travis County has the worst record in the state for reporting crime data."
ReplyDeleteI assume your statement revers to CJIS, which is different than UCR. The problem as I see it, is at the prosecutor level, who fail to file their part of the three part CJIS report.
Those who do not properly report should be penalized, yet the lege rewards them by state compensated funding and grants.
The earlier comments bring to mind Ron Wilson's bill, filed in the House some years ago, proposing to build a wall around Travis County. I think it was voted favorably out of committee. :-)
ReplyDeleteOn a more serious note: by a 5-4 vote, the SCOTUS ruled today that an erroneous crime record - in this case, a warrant which had been recalled but still showed up on someone's records - was not sufficient to trigger the exclusionary rule after a search incident to arrest on that warrant revealed that the subject, a convicted felon, was carrying a firearm and drugs.
I have mixed feelings about the ruling. On the one hand, I feel that the exclusionary rule is an indispensable protection of our civil liberties, and I don't like to see it chipped away.
On the other hand, it's hard to argue with the Chief Justice's statement to the effect that "probable" cause is not metaphysically certain cause. As long as the officer believes in good faith that there is a valid warrant for someone's arrest, then I agree with the Chief Justice that he has "probable cause" to effect the arrest, which in turn triggers the right to search the subject incident to that arrest.
But in a state in which one out of every nine people has an outstanding warrant, and in a state with a demonstrated history of doing such a poor job of keeping accurate crime records, you'd have to say that in Texas at least, the exclusionary rule has just taken a shot to the gut. And the state has been given no inducement to clean up its act.
Exellent comment, Don - I'm stealing it for its own Grits post. :)
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