Thread by @reveal

1/ NEW INVESTIGATION with @newsy and @propublica:

Across the country, law enforcement agencies are making it appear as if they’ve solved a significant share of their rape cases.

They’re actually just closing them – and allowing suspects to roam free.
revealnews.org/article/rape-s…

2/ There are two ways police can clear a case.

a. Arrest
b. A process called “exceptional clearance”

The arrest is straightforward, and it’s supposed to be the way you handle most cleared cases. Exceptional clearances should be rare.

3/ But our data analysis shows that many departments rely heavily on exceptional clearance, which can make it appear that they are better at solving rape cases than they actually are.

4/ We’ve been looking at this issue for more than a year. We read through hundreds of police reports, requested data from internal databases and sent more than 100 public records requests to the largest law enforcement agencies in the country.

5/ Sixty-five got back to us. We found that more than half of them cleared more rapes through exceptional means than by actually arresting a suspect in 2016.

Some examples ...

6/ @BaltimorePolice reported to the public that it cleared 70 percent of its rape cases in 2016 – nearly twice the national average.

In reality, the department made arrests about 30 percent of the time. The rest were exceptionally cleared.

7/ @oaklandpoliceca said it had cleared 60 percent of rapes reported in 2016. For every case they resolved through arrest, the department cleared *more than three* by exceptional means.

8/ In Hillsborough County, Florida, home to Tampa, the sheriff’s department cleared 12 percent of rapes in 2016 by arrest. It cleared three times as many by exceptional means.

9/ The list goes on:

* Los Angeles
* Denver
* Wichita
* Omaha

10/ In Austin, TX, police have used their high clearance rates to show the public and lawmakers that they’re succeeding in solving crimes – and to ask for money.

Our analysis, however, found that 2 out of 3 cleared rape investigations were closed by exceptional means in 2016.

11/ Sgt. Elizabeth Donegan, who was a supervisor in @Austin_Police’s sex crimes unit for nine years, says the department is using exceptional clearance to embellish its numbers.

12/ Her superiors pressured her to close more rape cases by exceptional means, she said in her first interview about the issue.

13/ Donegan says she never changed the clearance numbers as she was asked.

The year after she was transferred out of the job, the share of rapes cleared by exceptional means jumped more than 50 percent, our data analysis shows.

14/ The failure to arrest can have consequences, as we see in one suspect’s case in Baltimore County, Maryland.

15/ Bryan Kind, a man in his early thirties, was accused of having sex with an adolescent girl. Police exceptionally cleared the case, making it look like a success. But they didn’t arrest him. He went on to be accused of a similar crime in a different state.

16/ You can see if your local police are using exceptional clearance at a high level.

Search the data here:

projects.propublica.org/graphics/rape_…

17/ This story is part of Case Cleared, our project on how rape cases disappear in America. Hear our latest episode on the topic: revealnews.org/episodes/case-…

Part 2 goes live on Saturday.

18/ Make sure to sign up for our newsletter to get the latest on this investigation and more: revealnews.org/newsletter