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CompStat

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CompStat—or COMPSTAT, short for Computer Statistics—is a computerization and quantification program used by police departments. It was originally set up by the New York City Police Department in the 1990s. Variations of the program have since been used in police departments across the world.[1] According to a 2022 podcast by Peter Moskos with John Yohe and Billy Gorta, the name CompStat was suggested by detective Richard Mahere for the computer file name of the original program to comply with 8.3 filename conventions, short for "Comparative Statistics" and "Computer Statistics.".[2]

Origins

COMPSTAT is a management system created in April 1994 by Bill Bratton and Jack Maple, who Bratton met while serving as chief of the New York City Transit Police and hired him as the New York Police Department's top anti-crime specialist when he became Police Commissioner in 1993.[3]

COMPSTAT began as weekly meetings at One Police Plaza where officers were randomly selected from precincts and quizzed about crime trends in their districts and how to respond.[3] At the time, the NYPD collected crime statistics every 6 months; under threat of transfers, they began to collect information daily.[3] In February 1994, the department heads provided a hand count of major crimes in the first 6 weeks of 1993 and 1994.[4]

Maple drafted junior staffer John Yohe to modify an existing program to analyze the data.[3] COMPSTAT was named after a program called "compare stats".[4] It was originally ran on Informix's SmartWare desktop office system before being replaced by Microsoft's FoxPro database for business.[4] The Patrol Beureau's staff computerized the information provided by department heads and created the first 'CompStat' book, collating the information by precinct, patrol borough, and city.[4]

Impact

Research is mixed on whether CompStat had an impact on crime rates.[5] A 2021 study found no evidence that CompStat had an impact on serious crime, but the study did find substantial evidence that the program led police to engage in substantial data manipulation.[6]

Another criticism of the COMPSTAT program is that it may discourage officers from taking crime reports in order to create a false appearance of a reduction of community problems.[7][8] According to journalist Radley Balko, "some recent reports from New York City suggest the program needs some tweaking to guard against the twin dangers of unnecessary police harassment and underreporting of serious crimes."[9] An anonymous survey of "hundreds of retired high-ranking police officials . . . found that tremendous pressure to reduce crime, year after year, prompted some supervisors and precinct commanders to distort crime statistics."[10]

Similarly, crimes may be reported but downplayed as less significant, to manipulate statistics. As an illustration, before a department begins using CompStat it might list 100 assaults as aggravated and 500 as simple assault. If there were a similar pattern of underlying criminal activity the next year, but instead 550 assaults are listed in CompStat as simple and 50 as aggravated, the system would report that progress had been made reducing major crimes when in fact, the only difference is in how they are reported.

Manipulating reporting data may also negatively affect personnel and financial disbursement; communities whose improvements (on paper) show they need less resources could lose those resources—and still face the same amount of actual crime on the streets.

Many of these negative effects of the COMPSTAT system were dramatized in HBO's The Wire, as part of an overarching theme of systemic dysfunction in institutions.[11] Indeed, "[o]ne of the central themes of the critically acclaimed HBO series . . . was the pressure politicians put on police brass, who then apply it to the department’s middle management, to generate PR-friendly statistics about lowering crime and increasing arrests."[12] In the show, this was referred to as "juking the stats".

The issue was further publicized in 2010 when NYPD officer Adrian Schoolcraft released recordings of his superiors urging him to manipulate data.[13][14][15]

In 2014 Justice Quarterly published an article stating that there was statistical evidence of the NYPD manipulating CompStat data.[16]

NYPD Captains Endowment Association
On June 24, 2020, the NYPD Captains Endowment Association president, Chris Monahan, wrote a letter to then NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner Dermot Shea calling for the NYPD to end its use of COMPSTAT. His criticisms of COMPSTAT include dividing police and the community, particularly black and brown communities, and increasing the chances of officers engaging in street encounters. [17]

When Compstat was developed under then Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, high-ranking police officials widely incorporated the "stop, question and frisk".[18] Statistically, no relationship between stop-and-frisk and crime seems apparent. A 2016 Brennan Center analysis showed part of New York remaining safer was the introduction of CompStat.[19] CompStat detractors say it helped fuel harassment of hundreds of thousands of black and brown New Yorkers. Cities including Houston and Phoenix saw similar declines and attributed them mostly to economic development and community policing.[20]

TrafficStat

The NYPD's TrafficStat was modeled after CompStat. TrafficStat tracks motor vehicle, bicyclist, and pedestrian crashes.[21]

  • In the CBS TV series The District, inspired by the real-life experience of former New York Deputy Police Commissioner Jack Maple, statistics clerk Ella Mae Farmer (played by Lynne Thigpen)[22] was shown to be a wiz at using the system, which proved invaluable to the success of Washington, D.C. Police Chief Jack Mannion and to the department, and which contributed to her promotion from an obscure position located in an out-of-the-way office to Director of Administrative Services.[23]
  • The system is shown in use in Baltimore, Maryland, in The Wire on HBO, though in the show it is referred to as "ComStat". (Baltimore's real-life system is called Citistat.)[24]
  • The podcast Reply All aired two episodes regarding CompStat, titled "The Crime Machine Part I"[25] and "The Crime Machine Part II".[26]

See also

References

  1. ^ Didier, Emmanuel (2018-07-30). "Globalization of Quantitative Policing: Between Management and Statactivism". Annual Review of Sociology. 44 (1): 515–534. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053308. ISSN 0360-0572. S2CID 150164073.
  2. ^ Peter Moskos (2022-04-06). "Quality Policing Podcast" (Podcast). Retrieved 2022-12-08.
  3. ^ a b c d Smith, Chris (2018-03-02). "The Crime-Fighting Program That Changed New York Forever". New York Magazine.
  4. ^ a b c d Eterno, John A.; Silverman, Eli B. (2006). "The New York City Police Department's Compstat: Dream or Nightmare?". International Journal of Police Science & Management. 8 (3): 218–231. doi:10.1350/ijps.2006.8.3.218. ISSN 1461-3557.
  5. ^ Didier, Emmanuel (2018-07-30). "Globalization of Quantitative Policing: Between Management and Statactivism". Annual Review of Sociology. 44 (1): 515–534. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053308. ISSN 0360-0572. S2CID 150164073.
  6. ^ Eckhouse, Laurel (2021). "Metrics Management and Bureaucratic Accountability: Evidence from Policing". American Journal of Political Science. 66 (2): 385–401. doi:10.1111/ajps.12661. ISSN 1540-5907. S2CID 243672885.
  7. ^ "Crime statistics doubts adding up". Nypdconfidential.com. 2003-06-30. Archived from the original on 2006-05-19. Retrieved 2016-06-02.
  8. ^ "Village voice > news > Emergency Room Casualty Rates Shatter Mayor Bloomberg's Safe-City Boasts by Paul Moses". Archived from the original on August 11, 2007. Retrieved August 28, 2007.
  9. ^ Balko, Radley (2010-12-20) Beyond Bars, Reason
  10. ^ Chen, David (2010-02-08) Survey Raises Questions on Data-Driven Policy, The New York Times
  11. ^ Crime Stats From HBO to BSO Miami Herald, 1B, December 6, 2004.
  12. ^ Balko, Radley (2010-03-08) The Other Broken Windows Fallacy, Reason
  13. ^ Baker, Al; Rivera, Ray (10 September 2010). "Secret Tape Has Police Pressing Ticket Quotas". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-06-02.
  14. ^ Parascandola, Rocco (2010-09-11). "Cop in scandal: No fines, no jobs". NY Daily News. Retrieved 2016-06-02.
  15. ^ Colleen Long and Tom Hayes (October 9, 2010). "Cop who made tapes accuses NYPD of false arrest". Associated Press.
  16. ^ "Police Manipulations of Crime Reporting: Insiders' Revelations" (PDF). Justice Quarterly. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  17. ^ Moore, Tina; McCarthy, Craig (June 24, 2020). "NYPD captains' union calls for end of CompStat program". New York Post. Retrieved June 24, 2020.
  18. ^ Naspretto, Ernie. "The real history of stop-and-frisk". nydailynews.com. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  19. ^ "Ending New York's Stop-and-Frisk Did Not Increase Crime | Brennan Center for Justice". www.brennancenter.org. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  20. ^ Smith, Chris (2018-03-02). "The Crime-Fighting Program That Changed New York Forever". Intelligencer. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  21. ^ "New York City TrafficStat". NHTSA.gov. Archived from the original on 2012-09-21. Retrieved 2016-06-02.
  22. ^ "Lynne Thigpen Biography". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Retrieved February 18, 2016.[dead link]
  23. ^ "The District". TV.com. Retrieved 2016-06-02.
  24. ^ Cite error: The named reference baltimorecity1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  25. ^ "#127 The Crime Machine, Part I by Reply All". Gimlet Media. Retrieved 2018-10-12.
  26. ^ "#128 The Crime Machine, Part II by Reply All". Gimlet Media. Retrieved 2018-10-12.

Further reading

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