City Faces Audit, Stands By Data
TAMPA — During her recent re-election campaign, Mayor Pam Iorio touted a double-digit drop in crime.
The statistic was echoed by police, who announced last month a 36 percent reduction in violent crime since 2002.
On Tuesday, at the prompting of state Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, a state agency asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to audit the city’s crime statistics to make sure they are accurate.
The audit request by Storms, who has battled the city over its strip clubs and the rowdy reputation of Ybor City, was met with disdain by Iorio.
“I don’t really know what her motivation is,” Iorio said.
Criticism of Tampa’s crime statistics was raised during Iorio’s reelection campaign in a television news report and by an opponent, Marion Lewis, a former Tampa police captain. Lewis accused police of cheating on crime figures and asked for the department to hire an independent auditor.
The request was not granted, and Lewis lost to Iorio in a landslide.
Two weeks after the election, Storms asked the state’s Office of Program Police Analysis and Government Accountability for an audit.
“This is the first time in my memory we have conducted an audit of a local law enforcement agency,” said Marti Harkness, staff director for criminal justice for the accountability office, an oversight agency of the Legislature.
Harkness said he does not know whether any problems exist with the crime statistics. He said the audit will review a statistically significant number of files to ensure that the data have been accurately reported.
Iorio and the police stand by the crime statistics.
“While it is unusual to have an audit without evidence of wrongdoing,” Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said, “we are glad to open our doors for review.
“We believe other cities around the state will benefit from learning the details of our crime reduction program,” McElroy said. “With 22,000 crime reports written last year, there will be some small margin of error, but not enough to affect our crime rate.”
McElroy said the Tampa Police Department does not know what sparked the review.
In a brief interview Tuesday, Storms said she wanted proof that Tampa’s information was accurate. She said she became concerned after the television news report raised questions about the statistics.
Storms said if the information is accurate, Tampa’s department may become a model for the state.
“If the report brings good news, we’ll celebrate it,” she said. “If it’s not good news, we’ll take it from there.”
Iorio said the city will comply.
“There have never been any facts given to indicate in any way that our crime stats are wrong,” Iorio wrote in an e-mail to the Tribune. “This issue was raised during my re-election campaign by my opponent with no facts given to support his allegations. …The only reason the state is auditing us is apparently because Ronda Storms requested it.
“There is no reason for an audit,” Iorio wrote. “But if someone calls us and tells us we need to have an audit, we will cooperate. I just hope the results of the audit are as widely noted as the news of the audit.”
Iorio said Storms’ request for an audit is another blast from a frequent critic of the city.
For the past four years, Storms “has had a very negative view of the city of Tampa,” Iorio said. The reduction in crime, she said, “is an area where we have been really successful.”
The police department’s 2005 annual crime report shows a 16.8 percent drop in Part 1 crimes reported to the FBI from 2004 to 2005. These crimes are murder and non-negligent manslaughter, aggravated assault, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny and vehicle theft.
The agency’s 2006 semiannual crime report shows an 11 percent drop in the number of these crimes reported in the first six months of 2006 compared with the same period a year earlier.
Lewis accused the department of misclassifying some crimes as lesser offenses so they are not considered part of the city’s crime rate. He referred to a television news report stating the city had 22 murders last year but reported only 20.
“If TPD is willing to cheat on the murder rate, you can be sure auto burglary, muggings, assaults are being underreported and misreported,” he said during the campaign.
Responding to that accusation, Tampa police asked the FDLE to review the two cases in question. The FDLE, along with the FBI, found that neither case should have been classified as a murder.
Harkness said the FDLE audit will look at cases from the time they were reported to Tampa police and follow them to see how they were classified.
Because the FDLE will be reviewing statistics that are voluntarily reported to the federal Uniformed Crime Report program, Tampa police face no penalties, Harkness said.
However, the accountability agency could make recommendations to the Legislature on how to change Tampa police operations.
The audit will not begin until after this session as the Legislature wraps up next month, Harkness said.
The FDLE could not immediately comment about the frequency of requests for audits of law enforcement agencies. However, a review of media reports shows that it is not unprecedented.
Researcher Buddy Jaudon and reporters Josh Poltilove and Ellen Gedalius contributed to this report.
