On January 8, the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department released the Savannah crime statistics for 2012 and announced that it was the lowest crime statistics in the department’s history. But the accuracy of those statistics were questioned when a former SCMPD officer, Steven Hummel, released statements to WTOC on Jan. 17 as to why he resigned in December.
“It seems like they are playing the numbers game. They want to cover up how many crimes are actually happening in Savannah,” said Hummel. “I can only speak for central precinct because I didn’t work in any other area, but every time a crime happened and a supervisor showed up they would say we don’t want to take a crime hit for that, let’s write it up a different way. My job was not to make sure the crime stats were low.”
When asked about Hummel’s statements, SCMPD Police Chief Willie Lovett released this statement:
Allegations have been made by several city aldermen alluding that members of the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department have altered or refused to take crime reports for the purpose of reducing crime numbers.
No information has been provided by anyone to this department to allow us to determine the veracity of these allegations.
Neither I nor any member of the command staff of this department has ever encouraged officers to avoid taking reports or reducing severity of those reports. That is a federal crime and would not be tolerated.
A request has been made through our city manager for all information concerning these allegations to be provided to this department for investigation. Once it is received, an independent law enforcement agency will be asked to look into them.
Until this investigation is complete, it would be improper and premature for me or any member of this department to make any further comment.
So, are the “all-time low” crime statistics misleading? With several shootings already reported this year, it may be hard to fully accept that Savannah’s crime rate is the lowest it has been in SCMPD history. Who’s word can the residents of Savannah trust — a current or former employee of the SCMPD? Well, maybe some insight can be gained when asking those whom are and have been responsible for releasing necessary crime information to the public.
Former Public Affairs Officer, Gena Bilbo, described her previous job as “unnerving, to be perfectly honest.” As opposed to officers whom have their separate precinct to worry about, “every crime, like any stabbing, shooting, purse snatching, bank robbery — all of those came to my Blackberry. So I was hyper-aware of everything that was happening in the city.” But with that broad view of the crimes that were being committed, Bilbo noticed that the management in each precinct had to be treated differently in order to keep the overall crime rates down.
She gives the credit to the decline in crime to Police Chief Lovett. “Chief Lovett gives all of these commanders the ability to manage their precincts the way they need to manage them”, Bilbo said.
“Unfortunately, everyone just kind of looks out for themselves, everyone is really quick to point the finger and point the blame … like the kid, the officer, Steve Hummel, who was a good officer, but (who) said he quit because he said his ethics were being questioned and that whole nine yards. I can tell you, doing police work, that the law is black and white, but, there is a load of discretion that comes into place — a load of it. And, an officer that has been doing this job for a really, really long time knows a little more about how some things need to be handled than somebody that’s just out of the academy.
Mind you, I’m sure there are things that get written up wrong, and I’m sure there are some times when things are handled improperly — we’re human. And it happens in every police department across the country. I’m not saying that it never happens, but, I don’t believe, and this is coming from someone that worked for Chief Lovett for three and a half years, and brought many things to his attention that he handled and addressed immediately, I don’t believe for a million years that he would ever condone anything like that. So, flat out, I don’t buy it.”
Hummel also stated that “I am not a disgruntled officer. I was disgruntled with the way Savannah police works. I would never work for SCMPD again and I would never refer anyone to work for that department.” The former officer said that he was in good standing with the department and his blame doesn’t lie on the other officers but, rather, the people in higher positions.
But if the crime rates are botched somehow, is it not the responsibility of the department as a whole? Bilbo goes on to explain that when it comes to a discrepancy in the crime rates, another “aspect is that … sometimes officers are lazy. You get to a scene and someone left their car door open and they left change in their center console and someone opened their door and took their change and they want to file a report. You know, and the officer is like, ‘Really? Then I’m going to have to do the report and I’m going to have to take a hit for a part one crime, and you really want me to, really?,”
Both Bilbo and SCMPD Public Affairs Administrator Julian Miller spoke of the Savannah Impact Program. Miller explains how the program takes “the most violent of the recidivists — the people who commit crimes over and over — and try to work with them to keep them from committing crimes and that has had an 85 to 87 percent success rate. And that is by working with them, giving them alternatives, training them to do other things, giving them an education and also watching them.” This program is one of the most apparent contributing factors to the drop in crime.
Bilbo stated that the majority of arrests that are made are people who have previously committed a crime — how it was a rare occurrence to arrest someone who hasn’t been in conflict with the law before. So, maybe S.I.P. has made the impact it has set out to make since the program’s establishment in 2001.
Skewed information on crime rates are of no help to anyone’s safety. But thanks to the participants of S.I.P., projects like remodeling the SCMPD headquarters have been completed.
