Chicago Magazine reports that the city continues to find new ways to underreport murders to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR)—methods condoned by authorities in police superintendent Garry McCarthy’s department.
Interviews with more than 40 current and former Chicago officers revealed that the department reclassified murders as “non-criminal death investigations” before reporting deadlines; changed the default code for likely murders to keep them off the UCR; delayed correcting those codes when evidence dictated; and found creative ways to exclude certain murders such as those resulting from gang gunfights, from beatings resulting in heart attacks, and those occurring in previous years or on state highways within city limits. Chicago hid carjacking-related murders as “hit-and-run” accidents, and hid another 13 incidents by listing them as “confidential.”
In all, Chicago reclassified 797 deaths in 2014, some of which are certainly murders.
