NCJ Number
238402
Date Published
March 2012
Length
29 pages
Annotation
This is the U.S. Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General's (OIG) report of a review of the Phoenix Police Department (PPD) in Phoenix, AZ, in order to verify the number of 2008 kidnapping incidents (PPD indicated over 370) reported in the grant application materials submitted by the PPD under the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) Grant Nos. 2009-SC-B9-0108 and 2010-DG-BX-0020.
Abstract
This review was prompted by an allegation received by the OIG that although the City of Phoenix and PPD officials testified to Congress that there were 368 kidnapping in 2008, the actual number of kidnapping incidents was closer to 50. Based on the discrepancies with the PPD's coding and classification of crimes, the OIG found that applying the elements of the Arizona kidnapping statute to the PPD's case files may overstate the number of kidnapping incidents for crime reporting purposes, because cases could be counted as kidnapping when a different, greater offense may also have occurred. In applying the guidelines in the UCR Handbook, an incident should be counted as a kidnapping when the movement or confinement of an individual was not an integral part of the separate offense or was not merely incidental to the commission of the other crime. This UCR criteria was used by the OIG in determining that many of the offenses coded as kidnappings by the PPD were a part of the logistics for committing a more harmful crime against the victim. In such cases, only the greater crime should be coded for UCR purposes. This report presents the OIG's estimate of the offenses that should have been labeled kidnappings based in the relevant Arizona statute and the USR coding procedures. The OIG also identified additional issues with the PPD's classification of offenses and the PPD's management of case files. 2 tables and appended relevant correspondence