D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier in April 2010 (Getty Images/Alex Wong)

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier continues to rebuff a blistering analysis issued by Human Rights Watch last month that says that the Metropolitan Police Department is under-reporting sexual assault cases. In the Human Rights Watch report, the authors write that in more than 170 cases they requested to analyze, police offered no documentation.

Since Human Rights Watch released its report, Lanier has blasted its methodology. She said yesterday on WTOP that the some of the missing cases of the 170 that Human Rights Watch says went missing were taken over by police departments in other jurisdictions, The Washington Times reports:

“We found at least 18 cases that match that date that police reports were taken by other jurisdictions, so they wouldn’t have been found in our records,” Chief Lanier said Thursday on WTOP Radio’s “Ask the Chief” program. “That doesn’t mean we didn’t document 18 cases. That means that those cases were documented by another agency. It’s not unusual for victims to report to Washington Hospital Center that have been assaulted in another jurisdiction.”

Alison Parker, the head of Human Rights Watch’s United States program, told the Times it is “deeply disturbing” that MPD still has not turned over documents in those cases.

Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), who has oversight of MPD, is planning to hold a hearing of the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee on the contents of Human Rights Watch’s report next month. Wells’ chief of staff, Charles Allen, writes in an email that a firm is being consulted to conduct an independent, pro bono review of the report and that the hearing will be held following an MPD performance review hearing scheduled for February 27.