N.O. police berated over release of crime data
Council members say NOPD takes too long to inform public
Thursday, May 10, 2007
By Brendan McCarthy
Under pressure from constituents who say New Orleans police stonewall requests for crime data, the City Council’s criminal justice subcommittee took police representatives to task Wednesday, calling for a faster, freer flow of public information.
“I want information provided in real-time fashion, in a user-friendly, clear and concise way,” said Councilman James Carter, chairman of the committee. The department should provide crime data quickly and online, mapped out for easy public consumption, council members said. Police officials, in turn, argued some policies, procedures and crime data should be kept secret.
NOPD spokesman, Sgt. Joe Narcisse, head of the public information office, said the department must withhold select information to protect ongoing investigations.
“We can’t do some ‘pie-in-the-sky, give the citizens more information,’” Narcisse said in an interview. “We have to put our foot down . . . and figure out if it is prudent to do that.”
Narcisse said the NOPD “wants to make the City Council and their constituents happy,” but that the release of crime data has to be “practical and legal.”
Police Superintendent Warren Riley did not attend the committee hearing and declined through a spokesman to be interviewed. Narcisse said the chief was in other meetings all day.
The meeting marked a crescendo in public outcry over the release of crime statistics and incident reports.
“Everyone is interested in these maps,” Councilwoman Shelley Midura said. “A lot of groups are trying to create their own maps and their own information sites because they don’t feel like what they are getting from the Police Department is adequate or reliable or comprehensive.
“Obviously it is not comprehensive because you are leaving out a pretty big area of criminal activity. . . . There’s got to be a better way to inform the public.”
When asked for a written breakdown of policy and procedures relating to the release of public information, Maj. Michael Sauter, the head of technology, told the council most of that information was “not meant for the public.”
Carter asked incredulously, “Are you saying that can’t be provided to the City Council?”
The NOPD recently unveiled crime maps on its Web site, www.NOPD.com. The maps allow users to type in an address or intersection and plot crimes within a two-mile radius.
Sauter said the department recently updated the maps to reflect all homicides and shootings, and inputs most data within days of the incident. However, in an unscientific test by The Times-Picayune, the map did not include information about several recent shootings and stabbings across the city.
For instance, the maps don’t show a shooting on May 2 in the 800 block of Whitney Avenue, or a stabbing and robbery in the 300 block of Royal Street that same day. Also absent is a robbery on May 1 in the 13600 block of North Lemans Street.
Neither do the maps include sex crimes from any time period. Sauter said advocacy groups have told him they want that crime data kept private to protect the victim’s address or identity.
During the public comment section of the hearing, Brian Denzer, developer of one crime-mapping site, disputed the NOPD’s assertions of what they could and couldn’t do.
“The risk is the public will believe the NOPD is hiding crimes,” Denzer said. “There is a palpable sense of fear in the community.”
Denzer’s site, www.citizencrimewatch.org, maps violent crimes, with incident information culled from a variety of sources.
“The goal is to create an open-source crime mapping, reporting and alert system for the community, so that citizens might have a greater awareness about the safety of their neighborhoods,” according to the site.
In a telephone interview Wednesday evening, Narcisse said that providing information too quickly to the public can lead to an inflated perception of crime.
“There is a percentage of (emergency) calls that do not turn out to be what we originally wrote up,” Narcisse said. “If you come home and your chair is not on your front porch, you could call the cops and report a robbery. The complaint operator puts the call on the map as a robbery. It is, however, a theft.”
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Brendan McCarthy can be reached at bmccarthy@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3301.
