Joe Horn says "I could not disagree with you more that the practices are DESIGNED to create a false appearance. It's a civil service bureacracy. Think IRS rules and regs, BLM regs and rules, etc."
That opinion about practices being not designed for falsehood is hard to reconcile with the quote from the UCR Handbook that I gave. If police follow that handbook for reports to the UCR, they will ignore findings from other than the police. These findings from other sources result in 3 to 5 times as many legal civilian defensive gun use homicides classifications annually as are reported in the FBI UCR. Now, it may be that the police agencies and FBI are not trying to cook the books deliberately and that their actions are not so intended, but the FBI reports annually around 250 legal DGUs when there is evidence of many more. And, we have the UCR Handbook which explains at least part of the reason for that difference. Whether deliberately cooking the books or not, the FBI under reports legal DGUs every year by a large factor and their UCR Handbook describes practices designed to promote huge under counts of DGU homicides. That's the message. Phil > > > Police reporting practices re: shooting reports, whether with fatality or injury or none, merely reflect shots fired, (or other weapon used) result, arrests and charges if any. > As for initial reports, they mean little and are generally held for the Coroners review of the same case and add to the confusion with their OWN reports as well as their > judgement: Death at the hands of another/Justified or unjustified. Final reports may be statistically counted again or not. > > The FBI gets these stats from reports which are computer collated and generated by all departments and coroner's offices. > I assure you, no one in the police bureacracy I am familiar with is interested in cooking the books and the system does not easily lend itself to such activity. > Many entries are duplicates because of FBI taking info from all sources available in multiple jurisdictions in large metro areas and not comparing URN numbers. > > As for reports as to when police draw their weapons, unless the weapon is discharged, no mention of the firearm being deployed is mentioned. > I will tell you that in L.A. (my former jurisdiction) felony stops are utilized with drawn weapons on a regular basis, burglaries and robberies in progress are met with > drawn weapons and that fact is rarely mentioned as it is generally well known that such arrests are not made by saying "please submit to arrest." > > Defensive Citizen firearms use cases are generally classified as attempt rape, attempt burglary, attempt Robbery etc., and what the citizen did to discourage the crime. If no shots were fired, and the suspect ran away, nothing taken, no injuries, a F.I. (field interview card ) is completed and input to a computer data base which remains at the station and is used in determining patterns of crime and M.O. in certain beats. > > I could not disagree with you more that the practices are DESIGNED to create a false appearance. It's a civil service bureacracy. Think IRS rules and regs, BLM regs and rules, etc. > Think Post Office. > > Joe Horn, LASD RET > Autumn Rose Press > > > > Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:40:52 -0500From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Firearmsregprof@lists.ucla.edu; [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Re: Civilian legal defensive homicides > > Clearly, the UCR definitions and police practice are both designed to create the false APPEARANCE that CLDHs are few and far between. Once again "lying with statistics." This is deliberate. > > Don't forget that even this corrected number (13%) VASTLY UNDERSTATES the security impact of DGU's since the goal of a DGU is to "neutralize the threat" not to cause a homicide. That goal doesn't require a homicide because it is accomplished in 99% of the armed confrontations by a defensive display that causes the assailant to run away. The goal can be accomplished without firing a shot, wounding the assailant, or killing anyone. > > > ************************************************** > Professor Joseph Olson, J.D., LL.M. o- 651-523-2142 Hamline University School of Law (MS-D2037) f- 651-523-2236St. Paul, MN 55113-1235 c- [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> "Philip F. Lee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 10/23/08 6:28 PM >>>We know that the FBI does not report all civilian legal defensive homicides (CLDHs) by citizens by a significant factor. We know the FBI UCR reports a shooting death by a citizen as a DGU only if there is no question at the time of the initial investigation by police that the shooting is justified. By contrast police shooting homicides tend to bereported as justified unless an initial investigation has significant evidence to the contrary. > _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Firearmsregprof@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
