VAN NUYS—A captain from the Los Angeles Police Department has accused the department of misrepresenting violent crime statistics to portray the city as being safer than it actually is.
Captain Lillian Carranza, a 28-year veteran of the LAPD, and the head of the department’s Van Nuys Station alleged in 2014 she first began informing her superior officers about underreporting of crime in certain sections of the city, including Sunland and Tujunga. She indicated no action was ever taken. In 2015, after assuming jurisdiction over the Van Nuys station, Carranza launched her own audit.
She filed a government claim with the city (in lieu of a lawsuit) stating that she found a consistent underreporting of crime at numerous stations, including the Central and Pacific Divisions.
Carranza believes that violent crimes in 2016 have been underreported by as much as 10 percent. She did not provide the data used in her analyses in her claim. With the recommendation of her attorney, Carranza indicated she has evidence of her assertions, but did not provide them in her claim, citing the department’s strict confidentiality guidelines.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Carranza indicated in the report that the failure of the department to accurately report statistics “[was] due to a combination of systemic issues, procedural deficiencies, department-wide misconceptions about what constitutes an aggravated assault, and, in a small number of cases, individual officer error.”
