San Leandro police and a consultant briefed the City Council Monday on the department’s transition to the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, saying the change will produce a broader public dataset but does not itself mean crime has increased.

Assistant Police Chief Luis Torres and consultant Ed Glaude of Public Reporting, Inc. explained that NIBRS requires agencies to submit many more offense categories and that, unlike the older Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) method, NIBRS can count multiple offenses from a single incident instead of only the most serious one.

“Under NIBRS, if you have an incident involving two, three or four different offenses…all of those offenses are going to get counted,” Ed Glaude said. “It looks like a bigger volume of crime, but it’s not an increase in the actual rate.”

Why the change matters

Officials said NIBRS provides a more comprehensive public view of criminal incidents because it expands the list of tracked crimes (the consultant cited roughly 52 offense types under NIBRS versus eight under the old UCR summaries). The department must send monthly reports to the California Department of Justice, which forwards data to the FBI. The FBI then publishes national and state figures based on that standardized feed.

Torres told the council San Leandro’s underlying records database has not changed; rather, the reporting format and the codes submitted to DOJ and the FBI have. The department went live with NIBRS collection in April, staff said; the public-facing portal is still being updated to reflect the new structure and to avoid misleading comparisons to prior years.

Software and data-quality issues

Consultant Ed Glaude and department staff said a major source of delay nationally has been updates required of records management system vendors. The San Leandro Police Department’s vendor work required recoding to meet NIBRS definitions; officials said vendor delays slowed transition timelines but added that the new reporting system includes built-in data checks that can catch missing elements more readily.

Sgt. Mund, who handles records work for the department, told council that about one-quarter of submissions initially require manual correction because the department’s records software is still being tuned to NIBRS categories.

Public perception and portal design

Council members and public commenters expressed concern that NIBRS could be misconstrued as an increase in crime. Vice Mayor Bowen and others asked how the city will present and explain the new numbers to the public. Glaude recommended proactive messaging; he pointed to an FBI media toolkit for jurisdictions transitioning to NIBRS and encouraged a dedicated page and community outreach.

During public comment, Douglas Spalding asked whether the police crime-stats webpage shows raw local data or the NIBRS-fed public dataset; he also asked why Torres was introduced as acting chief. Torres clarified that the chief is absent and he is serving as the acting chief in the chief’s absence.

Other public comments raised the scope of offenses captured under NIBRS. Alvaro Ramos asked whether the system captures white-collar and financial crimes; Glaude said NIBRS expands fraud and related categories compared with the old UCR set.

No council action was required. Staff said San Leandro is submitting NIBRS data monthly and will continue updating the city portal and public communications to reduce misinterpretation of the new, broader dataset.