An audit of the Tallahassee Police Department's crime stats – which for three years have put the capital city's crime rate at the top of the state – found that there may be less crime than originally reported.

That's why TPD says it's changing the way it catalogs incidents.

Completed by the Miami-based PRI Management Group for $33,743, the audit found the number of incidents affecting annual data may have been incorrectly reported higher.

It found that the differences in definitions between the FBI – which compiles crime data annually – and Florida Statues may have been a reason behind the higher-than-normal crimes reported in Tallahassee city limits.

More:Leon County Crime Report

Human error and gaps in quality control of reports filed were also major contributors, the audit stated.

"The department was concerned about inaccuracies it found in its crime data and accordingly, was interested in undergoing an independent audit," PRI wrote in its report. "This inherent conflict between Uniform Crime Report and statute-based crime reporting has led to significant crime count errors in Tallahassee."

In March, TPD reported a 14 percent decrease in overall crime in 2017 compared to the year before. The Leon County Sheriff's Office reported a 9.4 percent decrease in crime in 2017 compared to a year earlier.

"We're reporting our lowest crime total since 2013 and lowest crime rate since 2013," said TPD Chief Michael DeLeo at a March city commission meeting. "So that's tremendous progress we've made."

The audit also found TPD's record management system is not equipped to seamlessly analyze data that is entered regarding labeling of offenses. Specific crimes were likely mislabeled in the records management system. It also found that there is no records manager position at TPD, adding to the workload and the probability that errors in reporting go unchecked.

Several system errors were found in the audit. Officers routinely selected the incorrect crime classification, which went unchecked and the UCR codes associated with the state statute were incorrectly programmed into the system. Additionally, crimes later determined to be unfounded or outside of TPD's jurisdiction were included.

An upgraded records management system is expected to be implemented in early 2019.

PRI President Ed Claughton conducted the audit of 2049 cases. He found that murders, sex offenses, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, larcenies and simple assaults were all over reported. Larceny and burglary were within the accepted margin of error.

Aggravated assaults were over reported by as much as 20 percent, the audit found. One of the reported murders from 2017 was actually a vehicular homicide.

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The report notes that the crime rate – incidents per 100,000 people – was on average 10 to 13 percent lower than would have been reported without the audit.

The data is self-reported annually to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The FBI, which compiles the data annually, as well as other groups, warn against using crime data to make comparisons because specific conditions and community factors vary.

City and police officials have said that crime numbers don't tell the entire story behind Tallahassee and Leon County having the highest crime rate in the state for the past three years.

Last month, TPD developed and approved a training bulletin directing officers how to file reports based on federal UCR guidelines.

"UCR rules do not always make sense!" the training bulletin notes. "However, we must follow the reporting requirements."

Most of the changes center around how multiple, similar crimes are tallied and reported within the system.

Under the bulletin, a number of vehicle burglaries in the same area, done in the same manner and believed to be committed by the same suspect are logged as one incident. Multiple hotel rooms break-ins in the same building, around the same time and likely by the same suspect are also one case. Only crimes against tenants in extended stay hotels require separate case numbers.

The audit made six recommendations including monthly audits to track error rates, hiring someone to fill the records management position, extending UCR training and switching to an incident-based reporting model, meaning every crime committed is logged as an incident.

"We wanted to ensure best reporting practices and that we're doing, not just technically correct but the most appropriate to make sure that we were up to current standards," DeLeo said in March. "We're actually reporting more incidents than actually occurred which is better than us under-reporting and someone thinking we're playing number games."

Contact Karl Etters at ketters@tallahassee.com or @KarlEtters on Twitter.