Photo by Marcellina

Following up on Homicide Watch’s reporting in December, the Post wrote over the weekend that D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier is using some creative accounting methods to make it look like the city’s homicide clearance rate is substantially higher than it is.

According to Lanier, the District’s police closed 94 percent of all homicide cases in 2011. But that stat includes murders that took place before 2011, the Post wrote, vastly increasing MPD’s clearance rate. If only those murders that took place in 2011 were counted, the closure rate would fall to a more normal level — 57 percent.

Lanier isn’t alone in using the accounting trick, though. In fact, the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting guidelines expressly allow it. Still, the news is a ding in Lanier’s armor, and somewhat gives credence to the argument made by the police union that MPD’s claims that crime is down are actually misleading.

“While I am extremely pleased that homicides and other crimes have decreased (as they have nationally), I am greatly concerned that other crimes have increased, particularly given that those increases are the opposite of national trends. Given the disparity between the actual numbers and the public perception, I think it is important that this issue be accurately reported. This is not some technical, esoteric issue. The perception that crime is down in the District (in fact, overall crime is actually up this year in the District) has a real and dangerous impact,” said Kris Baumann, president of the D.C. Fraternal Order of Police, in an email late last year.

To a certain extent, Lanier doesn’t even have to juke the stats. Homicides hit a 50-year-low last year, and she remains the single most popular D.C. official according to most surveys. Additionally, touting a clearance rate that was double that of most comparable cities would seem to invite scrutiny — and the very types of articles that call into question Lanier’s entire way our counting and categorizing crimes.