HOUSTON – KPRC 2 Investigates found the numbers the Houston Police Department provided to the National Incident-Based Reporting System, commonly known as NIBRS, do not match.
NIBRS is maintained by the FBI and lists the crime statistics for every police department in the United States.
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These statistics are voluntarily provided by the departments.
STATISTICS BELOW:
In February, Chief Troy Finner told the public about 4,000 sexual assault cases that were suspended under the code “SL.” We then found out that code was used in more than 264,000 cases, approximately 10% of all of the department’s cases over the last eight years.
We took a look at the statistics from 2019-2022 and found discrepancies in cases involving aggravated assault, homicide, motor vehicle theft, rape/sexual assault, and robberies.
While looking at those cases, we found that NIBRS has more aggravated assaults reported than HPD reported on their website. The difference in cases ranges from 1,941 cases to 2,879 during the four years.
Robberies had the second biggest discrepancy. We found that HPD reported more robberies in four years than NIBRS tracked, with the largest difference of -184 cases during 2022.
The next large difference involves rape and sexual assault.
In 2019, NIBRs reported 27 more cases of rape. Then from 2020 through 2022, HPD crime statistics show they reported more cases than NIBRs with the largest difference of -124 cases in 2022.
We wanted to know why the reporting was off and what were the ramifications on the current internal investigation of the suspended cases.
A spokesperson told us, “We don’t know if it will affect the NIBRS numbers, and it is a part of the ongoing case review.”
On Wednesday, Mayor John Whitmire told KPRC 2 Investigates Mario Diaz he will conduct an independent review of Chief Finner and the suspended investigations.