NEW ORLEANS – After you call 911, police dispatchers assign New Orleans police officers where to go and tell them what kind of crime it could be.
They talk using signals. For example, if you call the police because you were robbed at gun point at 122 Mockingbird Ln., then the dispatcher may tell the officer, "I have a 64-G at 122 Mockingbird Lane. Victim says she saw the men take off." An officer will respond saying that he or she will take that item. When the officer arrives, he or she may say "that's a good 64-G," meaning that it turned out to be the crime that got dispatched.
Some people find this police scanner talk fascinating – like the people behind the scene at Projectnola.com. It’s a group dedicated to translating police talk into community updates that anyone can understand, and it’s all viewable on their website.
Former NOPD Officer Bryan Lagarde started Projectnola.com in June. It was his hobby while running a surveillance camera company.
"I have a degree in criminal justice. I’m very interested in what happens in our city, especially when it comes to crime,” said Lagarde.
He has it set up where people can hear police frequencies through his website. He has dozens of volunteers who listens.
Tara Guillot is one of them. She lives in Lakeview and has the luxury of working from home. In the lulls of her day she listens.
"I know where not to go, because I listen to the scanners,” Guillot said.
Dr. John Penney, a criminologist at the Southern University of New Orleans, said accurate crime reporting helps officers plan crimefighting strategies better as well.
“I think we really need to be very accurate in our reporting of those types of crimes, because people's lives and decisions are based on information, and people want to know what's going on in their neighborhoods," Penney said.
But after a couple of months, Lagarde started to notice that his Project Nola team was documenting more major crimes on their site than police were listing on the NOPD crime maps. For example, Lagarde and his crew logged a shooting that happened at 1132 Carondelet St. on Aug. 30.
We looked for it on the NOPD crime map, but found nothing. We went to crime scene last week and met Anthony Moore, who said he was there that night.
"I heard the shots and I went outside,” Moore said. “And all I see was police and detectives around."
Another crime not on the map: an armed robbery and shooting on Aug. 3 in the 7th Ward on the corner of Allen Street and North Rocheblave Street.
Eyewitness News covered the arrest of the suspect. Yet this crime map lists the crime as only an auto theft, while the police report lists it as an armed robbery.
The report was authored by Officer Lawrence Weathersby Jr. His father, Deputy Chief Lawrence Weathersby, runs the department that is in charge of the accuracy of 911 dispatching and the recording of crimes in the Computer Aid Dispatch system.
Stacy Andrews remembers the day her employee was shot and carjacked while working on her house.
"He was hurt and very afraid. And due to the fact that I saw on the news that they caught the suspect, I had no idea that it wouldn't be listed," she said.
Lagarde admits his is not a scientific study; more of a curious discovery of a small fraction of the 911 calls. But he decided to document them all on a spreadsheet and compare it to the NOPD maps.
Project Nola documented 217 crimes that qualify for "the unified crime report" for August. Those are major crimes tracked by the FBI. The city's crime maps only list 144 of those crimes, or 66 percent.
For September, Project Nola recorded 165 crimes. The NOPD recorded 102.
Police Chief Warren Riley said he will not entertain the thought that Lagarde's methodology can compete with the nationally used and computerized system to document crimes.
"Let's just be real. You're listening to a radio and you're writing down. That's kind of ridiculous," Riley said. “This is an automated system that captures everything. I assure you that Mr. Lagarde has made some real mistakes."
Riley said once the 911 operator enters the final information from the scene into the computer aid dispatch system, it's out of his hands and into City Hall's.
"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."
He's referring to the city's Office of Technology Management Information Systems.
Riley said he has no reason to believe there is foul play.
"There is no reason for us to downgrade crimes. There is nothing that we do that I know of that's inappropriate. If anyone did, they would suffer the consequences. It's the paper trail. It would come back on you."
But at the end of January, the NOPD will have to provide that paper trail to the FBI. Via e-mail, Eyewitness News questioned the FBI if they had ever audited the New Orleans Police departments Statistics.
Their e-mail states: "A Quality Assurance Review (QAR) has never been conducted at the New Orleans Police Department. Louisiana's next QAR is scheduled to begin on 1/25/10, and New Orleans is on the schedule to be reviewed at that time."
Riley said he's not concerned. He said he would consider speaking with Lagarde about sharing the crime stats on his non-profit site, where people go hoping they'll see crimes on the maps that they hope to avoid ever seeing in person.
An NOPD spokesman cited the Thanksgiving holiday as a reason why they couldn't answer our questions as to why the crime in the 7th Ward appeared as auto-theft on the map, while the police report showed armed robbery, which is a much higher charge.
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