NEW ORLEANS -- Superintendent Warren Riley has responded to a 4 Investigates report from last month about how a citizen's anti-crime group called ProjectNola discovered certain crimes are not showing up on NOPD crime maps.
We highlighted two crimes in November: one was an armed robbery and shooting on Aug. 3 in the 7th Ward. Despite the police report, it was listed as an auto theft on the crime map. Chief Warren Riley told us that incident "was a mistake.”
The second crime was a shooting at 1132 Carondolet Street on Aug. 30. The crime didn't show up at all on the map, even though Riley confirmed it was a homicide. Riley said that's because it was a justifiable homicide.
Riley also said crime mapping is out of his department's hand once an officer confirms the crime with the 911 dispatcher.
“Those are civilians at City Hall that have the technical expertise that do the download and the mapping of the crime,” Riley said. “We really have nothing to do with that. What you see on our crime stat maps is what we get from MIS at City Hall.”
However, the man in charge of the management information systems within the city's Office of Technology provided information that contradicts Riley's statement by saying that "the data is updated by the NOPD through the mainframe system and represents all crimes and police reports associated with those crimes."
In January the FBI will run an audit of the way NOPD reports crime numbers. Riley said says this is simply a routine audit departments go through.
The FBI tells us it's the first audit performed on the NOPD.
