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Cops union, council react to 11 News investigation

09:35 PM CDT on Monday, May 7, 2007

By Mark Greenblatt / 11 News Investigates

Click to watch video

As 11 News reported last week for some crimes the Houston Police Department was not telling the FBI about more than 1,000 arrests.

Now officials, victim's advocates and even the police union say it is not just a matter of numbers but also an issue of your safety.

Houston's largest police union is upset

Because now the union does not believe it's getting the truth about crime statistics in Houston.

Numbers it depends on to fairly negotiate police manpower and salaries.

“This gets into an accountability issue,” said union officer Mark Clark.

Because for crimes like embezzlement -  HPD officially claimed to the FBI to have made just one arrest in 2004. 

And some years the department claimed a miraculous zero embezzlement arrests- for all of Houston.

The problem?

Over that same time period HPD’s internal records show they made more than 1,000 arrests for the same crime.

“I mean, it's preposterous,” said former Harris County prosecutor and now crime victims advocate Randy Burton. “The general public has a right to know are problems getting worse and what are our leaders going do about them.”

Burton's also upset about how the department reports DWIs, where 11 News found HPD keeping three sets of books. 

For all of 2005 a report to top police brass claims HPD made 1,300 DWI arrests.

But another report to the mayor and city council alleges 47-hundred arrests. While this official report made to both the state of Texas and the FBI claims more than 5,000 arrests all for the same year.

“It's laughable,” said Burton. “It makes me questions whether any number they've given the public and the mayor has any value whatsoever.”

City councilman Adrian Garcia is worried now too.

“There is a concern when you look at the different numbers,” said Garcia, a former police officer who chairs Houston's public safety committee.

“The bottom line is our information should tell a consistent picture,” said Garcia. We need good information to help set policy, help set budgets.

This is why he made a pledge to conduct his own investigation based on 11 News’ investigation.

Garcia said he is going to bring up the errors 11 News found and make it an agenda item with Houston's public safety committee.

And late Monday the Houston police department issued a statement in

response to 11 News reports.

The department claims there is no link between crime and arrest data.

“They are independent of one another because one arrest or suspect can be responsible for many crimes or one crime can have many suspects or  arrests,” Capt Mark Eisenman of HPD’s Crime Analysis Division said in a statement. “The Uniform Crime Report (provided to the FBI) guidelines are very complicated and the many men and women of the HPD work very, very hard to provide the public and governmental entities with the most accurate stats possible and abide by the reporting requirement."

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