Honolulu Police Department switching to new data-reporting system
The Honolulu Police Department will switch to a new, data-rich system for reporting crimes at the start of the new year.
The National Incident-Based Reporting System “captures details on each single crime incident — as well as on separate offenses within the same incident — including information on victims, known offenders, relationships between victims and offenders, arrestees, and property involved in crimes,” according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Deputy Chief John McCarthy told the Honolulu Police Commission on Wednesday that the new system could allow HPD to report more incidents and give the department the ability to report more crimes that it clears, usually through an arrest.
HPD actually started using both the current reporting system and NIBRS in 2018 and was able to show the commission on Wednesday that the murder clearance rate was higher under the newer system.
But McCarthy and Police Chief Susan Ballard warned that inadequate training and reporting by police and investigators might continue to lead to inaccurate reporting, or “garbage in.”
Commissioner Doug Chin, the former state Attorney General, said that was an excuse he’s heard for years.
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“All I ever hear from the department is: The reason why you can’t trust any of these numbers is because it’s just ‘garbage in, garbage out,’” Chin responded. “What I thought I heard you say at the beginning … was that NIBRS was going to clean all this up. So, I think what we don’t want to do is to go into 2021 and hearing this again.”
