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June 2004

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Compstat, NYPD, & Mad Data

By R. valeria Treves
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S candal erupted in the New York City Police Department in March 2004 when the Police Benevolent Association (PBA), a police officers union, accused various precinct commanders and other officials of “cooking the books” on crime statistics. One of the most publicized cases was the 50th Precinct in the Bronx. According to News day , when the deputy inspector left for a more esteemed position in Brooklyn, questions arose about how crimes had been recorded under his leadership. While the precinct had seen a 26 percent drop in crime during the deputy inspector’s tenure (a probable reason for his promotion), there was an 11 percent upsurge in the weeks following his departure. 

In addition to police officer denunciations, an array of community members, from residents to delivery people, have come forward to describe incidents where they were turned away at the police station when they sought to file theft or other reports. In addition to these “non-reports,” officers from the 50th claim that crime was often mis-catalogued and understated. In one instance, a case of grand larceny—a felony—was reported as a petty larceny misdemeanor. A rape was logged as an “inconclusive” incident. Officers also claim that sometimes aggressive supervisors would personally review crime complaints to determine whether they were really felonies or could be downgraded. These kinds of problems occurred throughout the city, prompting denunciations not only in the Bronx, but in other boroughs as well. 

While the PBA brings forth these charges to demand growth in their numbers and their pay, the proposed solutions mischaracterize the problem. As a range of commentators from police officers to civil rights advocates to scholars have pointed out, the problem might be rooted in Compstat, a computerized system used to track crime trends. Compstat, short for “computer statistics,” was first used in 1994 by then police Commissioner William Bratton and newly hired Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple. An idea based on the old pushpin crime maps, Compstat keeps statistical and spatial records of what kinds of crimes are occurring and where. In the 1990s Compstat was lauded as having played a central role in the much publicized decline of crime in New York City (the causes of which continue to be disputed), bringing fame to “tough on crime” Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Commissioner Bratton, and the NYPD in general. Today Compstat technology is used in police departments across the nation and throughout the world, often peddled by consulting firms headed by Giuliani and various ex- NYPD top brass. 

Initially, Compstat tracked only the seven major crimes that municipalities must report to the Federal Bureau of Investigation—murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand larceny auto. However, it has evolved since its first application and now tracks a large amount of information, including all categories of crimes, misdemeanors, and even the status and whereabouts of parolees. Compstat relies on a Geographic Information System (GIS) especially tailored for police departments by GIS software giant, ESRI Inc. The GIS can quickly compute, graph, and map information, and can be used to overlay spatially displayed crime records with information, such as proximity to schools or population densities. The result is a data-driven, cost-benefit analysis where police forces are targeted to the areas deemed the most needy. However, problems arise as precinct commanders’ “efficiency” is converted to statistics and often marketed as well. A central aspect of Compstat is regular meetings, often held at the Command and Control Center in lower Man- hattan, where precinct commanders are grilled by NYPD top brass. Precinct commanders must explain their statistics and strategies under the glare of giant monitors replete with graphs, charts, and maps displaying their success—or lack of it. These meetings are reported to be very tense. The rhetoric and procedures center on the idea of “accountability” and precinct com- manders are rewarded  or punish- ed, depending on their per- formance. 

As odd as it may seem, there are striking similarities between this policing strategy and current national trends in K-12 education. The rhetoric and ideology of “accountability” are paramount in both these trends and they both rely on standardized measures of achievement and on the visibility of performance directly tied to rewards and punishments. Much like school principals, precinct commanders are under tremendous pressure to generate new numbers and, much like teachers, the discretion of officers is taken away as the job becomes standardized. While in light of repeated police abuse, it may seem beneficial to remove officers’ individual discretionary power, the decision-making power is not given to residents or independent review boards, but is instead shifted to the precinct commanders and administrators who are no less likely to violate the rights and dignity of the people they police. 

Through Compstat, the importance of keeping crime statistics was shifted from a clerical task to a central administrative obligation around which data-driven decisions are made. This has led to fraud by precinct commanders and to a “lean and mean” style of management that often ignores the needs of the community. Furthermore, Comp- stat data can lead to causal connections where they may not exist, leading, for example, to a crack down on porn shops if these are correlated with high crime areas. It is important to understand that a data-driven system is only as good as its data; that which does not get recorded does not get analyzed.

R. Valeria Treves is a graduate student in geography at Hunter College, CUNY.  
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