June 4, 2009

Worthy: Detroit homicide drop doesn't add up

More than 100 left off books, she says

BY SUZETTE HACKNEY
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER Contrary to FBI statistics, more than 100 Detroit homicides were left off the books last year, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said Wednesday.
Worthy said the Detroit Police Department underreported that 306 people were killed in 2008. She said the homicide number is actually 423, though she would not disclose how she arrived at that figure.
"I have no interest in trying to make the city look bad," Worthy said Wednesday. "We have resource problems, and in order to adequately allocate our resources, I need to have an accurate depiction of the crime occurring in the city."
Worthy said Detroit Police Chief James Barren, appointed last October, cannot be held responsible for previous administrations' crime-reporting missteps, and said he has been receptive to improving how the department functions.
"I really respect how he is running the department," she said.
The FBI reported this week that murders last year dropped 22% in Detroit, from 392 in 2007 to 306.
Rod Liggons, Detroit police spokesman, said Barren acknowledged at a January town hall meeting that the homicide numbers reported to the FBI last year were erroneous, mostly because of misclassifications. For example, if a person is shot and dies three days later, that shooting may not be upgraded from assault with a weapon to a homicide. Barren said the number of homicides was likely 339.
"This is a chief who has an agenda to make the city safer," Liggons said of Barren. "If we have to take our lumps -- or take our praise -- we are not going to falsify our numbers because we don't gain anything from it."
Worthy said Detroit and other cities naturally are tempted to cook crime figures, especially because the numbers are self-reported. No city wants to be known as a murder capital or ranked in the top 10 for violent crimes, she said.
"But the only way we can solve our crime problem is to face our numbers, face reality and deal with it honestly," she said.