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Chief corrects March crime counts; city to reconcile weekly neighborhood reports with RMS data
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Summary
College Park police corrected several March counts (theft-from-auto down to nine from 11) and said some public weekly reports may use calls-for-service and different date ranges; officials committed to sharing location-level data to reconcile the discrepancy.
Chief Colletti opened the April 6 Public Safety meeting by correcting numbers in the written March report, saying the department’s theft-from-auto figure should be nine, not 11, and that a separate “other thefts” count should be seven rather than eight. “The report indicates that we had 11 theft from autos. In reality, we only had 9,” Colletti said.
Colletti presented the department’s March overview — four assaults (two domestic incidents currently under investigation), nine thefts from autos, seven other thefts, and three stolen vehicles — and said there were no robberies or burglaries in the city that month. When asked about a redacted assault entry, Colletti said the incident was under investigation and that some details cannot be discussed publicly.
Multiple residents and a council participant raised a separate concern: locally posted weekly summaries by a precinct corporal did not always match the city’s monthly report. A resident asked whether those weekly numbers feed into the city’s statistics. Colletti said the city’s monthly figures are drawn from the county RMS (records-management system), while some weekly posts may be pulling calls-for-service or using different date ranges, which can produce apparent mismatches. “They should all be in the same report,” Colletti said, but added that differing reporting windows or whether a call generated a formal report can explain discrepancies.
To address the issue, Colletti offered to provide granular location data for March thefts and asked sergeants to forward neighborhood reports for comparison. He read the March theft-from-auto locations that the department has recorded, including the 7000 block of Baltimore Avenue, the 8300 block of Potomac Avenue, the 9000 block of Baltimore Avenue, two incidents on the 4400 block of Calvert Road, 4700 block of Drexel Street, 4800 block of Hartford, 40800 block of Guilford, and 8150 Baltimore Avenue. Staff committed to comparing the RMS-based counts with weekly postings and to report back to council and residents.
Officials described the discrepancy as a likely combination of: (a) different date windows (weekly versus monthly), (b) some local posts reflecting calls-for-service rather than completed report entries, and (c) a recent change in the department’s statistician which Colletti said may have produced earlier tallying errors. Sergeant Whitehead was asked to collect the neighborhood officer’s data and forward it to Colletti for review.
The meeting record shows officials plan to share the reconciled data with council members and residents once the review is complete.
