CJ Day
Staff Writer
A recent investigation by the Jackson Hole News and Guide alleges that many Wyoming police departments are mis-reporting crime statistics.
According to the article published last Wednesday, many departments fail to send in their yearly crime statistics to the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI), and those that do could send incorrect information without facing any consequences.
“It matters for things like getting funding, analysing the data we send in so they know what resources to give us at the state level,” said Kirk Yorgenson, a senior criminal justice major.
For example, a department that reports more traffic stops than usual might apply for a grant to buy a new squad car. If a department’s data is incorrect, they could receive grants that will not do them much good.
On the inverse, a department could overreport certain crimes to qualify for other specific grants, or could under report crimes to avoid scrutiny.
“I don’t think there’s anything malicious about it,” said Yorgenson. “You have to give these cops the benefit of the doubt, there’s room for mistakes.”
Many law enforcement personnel have pointed to the aging infrastructure they use to report their data as the problem. Many of the state’s police departments are using computer software written in the 1990s, using data collection methodology first created in the 1930s. State agencies are making an effort to move to a slightly more current system, but that system is not much better.
The current data collection software is riddled with glitches and bugs, and reporting by hand is too time-consuming for both local police departments and the state agencies that collect the data.
“It’s a lot of work, and we figured, Cokeville’s a town of 150, it doesn’t matter a ton on the big scheme of things,” said Chief Jeremy Kirkland of the Cokeville Police Department. “It’s like, we can sit in the office dealing with this software, or we can be out there in a squad car.”
Cokeville is one of the 11 police departments that did not report its crime data to the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation in 2018. Most of these departments serve communities with a population less than a thousand people, but some, like the Lovell Police Department or the Teton County Sheriff’s Department, serve much larger areas.
The Teton County Sheriff’s Department, in particular, serves over 20,000 people in the Jackson area, which is Wyoming’s most popular tourist spot. The Jackson Hole Travel and Tourism Board estimates that 2.6 million people visit the area a year, with that number set to climb.
“It’s kind of scary that they don’t give this data out,” said Yorgenson. “It’s like, if the numbers were good, then they wouldn’t hide them.”
Yorgenson said it is possible the Teton County Sheriff’s Department keeps their data to themself because it might paint an unflattering picture of the department’s ability to fight crime during the summer months.
The department has defended itself from these allegations, saying its failure to report is because it would rather not report any data than report data that could be inconsistent.
Right now, the department is under no responsibility to report its data, as the DCI cannot punish departments for not reporting it. Until the DCI moves completely over to their new program, many of the state’s crime will continue to go misreported.
