By Associated Press - Wednesday, May 14, 2014

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The New Orleans inspector general says the city’s police department has an “institutional problem” classifying rapes, contributing to sexual assault statistics that are far below the norm for cities of similar size and crime rates.

The audit conducted by Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux says there was no evidence that police deliberately under-reported rape statistics for the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, which tracks nationwide data for eight major crime categories.

NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune reports (https://bit.ly/1gDjNeM) Wednesday the audit slams the department for lapses in internal controls that contributed to rape statistics that were 43 percent lower than those from 24 other cities with the country’s highest crime rates in 2012.

“By misclassifying the UCR data, the actual crimes that occurred were unknown to the public as well as law enforcement,” Quatrevaux said. “NOPD should ensure its officers are in compliance with its policies and procedures, and do a better job of making sure crime data is reported accurately.”

In a statement, Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas disputed the inspector general’s findings, saying internal reviews and external audits by the legislative auditor, the FBI and the state Commission on Law Enforcement have “failed to show any pattern or practice on the part of NOPD to downgrade the reporting of crime.”

“We do not agree that the NOPD misclassified sexual assault crimes and independent experts substantially validated our data,” he said.

The inspector general’s audit sampled 90 random cases from a pool of approximately 4,500 incidents between June 1, 2010, and May 31, 2013.

Quatrevaux said he did not believe the department was intentionally under-reporting rape in New Orleans. He said internal controls, such as timely reporting and supervisory oversight of crime classification, were lacking.

“We’ve seen no evidence of any intention (to game statistics),” Quatrevaux said. “If there’s a problem, it’s an institutional problem. I don’t think anyone’s out there deliberately trying to make statistics higher or lower.”

Quatrevaux said his office is preparing a similar audit on how NOPD has reported burglaries in its UCR data. He said his office plans to conduct annual audits of the department’s rape reports “for the foreseeable future.”

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Information from: The Times-Picayune, https://www.nola.com

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