50 Shades of Brown

A story about crime prevention incident reports during 2013,  all 20,233 of them.

During the last 5 months we have been investigating the Racine County Sheriff’s Office methods of classifying reports.

  

While investigating, we came across a classification called “crime prevention incident reports”.

Intrigued by the classification, we thought that Chris Schmaling and John Hanrahan had finally embraced community policing, so we focused our attention on Crime Prevention Incident Reports (herein referred to as CPIR) and began making inquiries into CPIR’s.

During the month of November, 2013, we began our inquiries at the patrol level. 

Several patrol officers we interviewed had no idea what we were inquiring about, other patrolman spoke only vaguely of the reports.

Others acknowledged the existence of such reports but would not further elaborate.

A few patrolmen spoke off record, indicating they had used the classification when stopping for coffee, using the bathroom,  or sitting doing reports, justifying the CPIR by the fact their presence at a location deterred crime. 

  

We continued to inquire, moving up the ranks to supervisors and lieutenants.  Many strangely told us “no comment” when we inquired about CPIR’s.

We went to the Sheriff substation on Hwy 20 and I-94, and inquired at the communications office about CPIR’s, many were familiar with the reports but stated either no comment or suggested we talk to the reporting CPIR officers.

We then drafted an open records request on December 20^th. 2013, and delivered the request to the sheriff’s office.  The request was simple and benign, seeking the criteria to qualify for reporting a “crime prevention incident”.

What we received was a written response 3 days later from Racine County Corporation Counsel stating that “the Racine County Sheriff’s office has "NO KNOWN  RECORDS" responsive to your request in its possession or control “   

SAY WHAT?

     

NO CRITERIA EXIST ?

How does one measure the value of these incidents if no criteria exist?

In police science,  methodology, criteria, controls, rules, rules of engagement and more are all used to measure and/or gauge the effectiveness of the actions of its force.

In police work, the number of incidents that occur often reflects how busy an officer or department is.

This wouldn’t be a story if CPIR’s were only filed a few times a year.   But 20,233 times?  this isn't a typo, twenty thousand, two hundred and thirty three times in 2013!

That’s over 55 times a day a CPIR is filed by the Racine County Sheriff Department.

So the story now begs a reason as to why the Racine County Sheriff Department personnel creates incident reports that have NO VALUE ?

OR DO THEY ?

For the next 50 days we will be exploring, exposing and debating the value of CPIR’s.