Audit: Baltimore Police Poorly Cataloguing Crime
BALTIMORE (AP) -- A new audit finds that nearly 20 percent of arrests made by Baltimore police for low-level "quality-of-life" crimes haven't been properly documented.
The Baltimore Sun reports that an independent auditor sampled about 1,100 arrests from April to December 2011 and found that 17 percent of reports written by officers did not support a finding of probable cause.
The auditor, University of Maryland criminologist Charles Wellford, was appointed as part of a 2010 settlement in a lawsuit against the police department. Wellford said the agency was making progress despite falling short of overall goals. He said in most cases where he determined officers' reports weren't in compliance, officers had not explained why they didn't pursue alternatives to arrest such as a warning or written citation.
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