Q&A of the Day – Are crimes in South Florida schools routinely underreported?
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Today’s entry: Brian, I read that the Runcie indictment involved the underreporting of crimes in schools. This was something frequently discussed after the attack in Parkland but never seemed to be resolved. I’ve started to wonder if A) this isn’t isolated to Broward schools and B) if it happens in other instances outside of schools. It seems to me there’s a general interest in lower crime rates by most public officials.
Bottom Line: You raise a good and interesting points. First though, about what we know regarding the indictment of Broward School Superintendent Robert Runcie. Not much. We know it’s a perjury charge in a near two-year grand jury investigation and we know the allegation is regarding one of the four areas being investigated by the grand jury. We don’t know much beyond that. The three-page indictment filed with the Florida Supreme Court is publicly available but is mostly redacted. One of the four areas of investigation is whether school officials underreported crimes committed at schools and if they are continuing to do so in violation of state law. It’s widely believed that this is the most likely to apply to Runcie based on previous findings of Broward’s reporting revealed by the Sun-Sentinel and the Stoneman Douglas Commission. They found this to be an issue in Broward, and the lax policy was at the root of the handling/transferring of Stoneman Douglas attacker Nikolas Cruz. Underreporting of crime does likely apply beyond Broward’s school’s.
As part of the Sun Sentinel’s 2018 investigation, they found a fifth of schools in Florida failed to report related data to the state at all. The implication is that 20% of schools never had a crime committed on campus. Given that there are 26 categories with mandatory reporting ranging from sexual assault to bullying to possession of alcohol or tobacco - it seems implausible that over 600 schools in Florida never have even one of those during a year. The problem with knowing how pervasive the underreporting is, even within the schools that do report to the state, is that we don’t know what we don’t know. That’s why it’s part of the grand jury investigation to attempt to figure it out. The same concern does apply outside of school to your point...
There are numerous reasons local and even state governments would want to show lower levels of crime. Because we don’t know the extent of what’s not properly reported or documented I don’t want to speculate with local governments, but I will share a real-world example which I had first-hand knowledge of years ago during my time in Savannah - which illustrates reasons why crime suppression might be attempted and an example of how it can occur.
Savannah’s economy is super-reliant on tourism, however crime is a huge issue for the city. Savannah’s port is the 3rd largest in the United States based on volume, however the city itself is super-small, as the metro ranks 159th nationally in population. What you get is all the attempted trafficking/gang-related activity you’d expect in one of the five largest cities in the country in small one. During the time I lived there (1997-2005), I was made aware by a credible source within the Savannah PD that gang on gang crime should not be reported when possible. Savannah’s reported crime rate was already high, and the additional reporting would have made Savannah’s crime rate the highest per capita in the country. Not exactly good for business - hence the decision to suppress gang-related crime.
I don’t know if that holds true today in Savannah, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the case and also if it were limited to just that city. Most of South Florida, for example, stands to benefit economically from the perception of lower crime through tourism. Once the grand jury’s investigation is finished, we should have a good idea of underreporting of crimes in schools. Perhaps that will be a time we can address the concern of underreported crime generally in South Florida.
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