a major loss in the data of the lower crimes on the scale. A complete total of certain crimes are not included in the statistics creating several inaccuracies in the totals. The UCR policy does not require all crimes to be reported to the state. Violations of the General City Ordinance and Vehicle and Traffic Law are considered too low for the hierarchy scale. These types of crimes are never included in the monthly submission and we generally never hear about them. Since crime statistics begin at the forefront of the police department, the police officer, this leaves a lot of room for unreliability. Police officers create crime data by completing and submitting crime reports and arrest reports. These reports include all of the pertinent information necessary for the committed crime(s) for a specific incident. There are times when police officers fail to complete written reports of certain crimes or they downgrade the offense of a report to a less serious offense. Meanwhile, some police reports are over-rated in the seriousness of certain offenses. At the end of each officer's shift the reports and arrest records are submitted to the appropriate unit or division of occurrence. Within a day or two these records are then transferred to a central records department and maintained at this location. During the transfer from one unit to another these records occasionally become misplaced and therefore cause a minor loss of data as a result. The information contained within the reports can come from three different sources. An officer can initiate a report by observing a crime being committed, a citizen can make a complaint to the police or, on rare occasions, the information will come from an offender. Citizen complaints, since they are the largest amount, generally depend upon the public's trust in the police at that point in time. These types of reports could rapidly decrease or increase at any time depending on the public's attitude toward...
