PITTSBURG — If you believe police department statistics, this blue-collar city has transformed itself from one of the most crime-plagued in the East Bay three decades ago to one of the safest today.

On its website, the Pittsburg Police Department touts charts showing that the city now records lower per-capita FBI crime rates than upscale Walnut Creek, and two years ago it boasted that reported crime had fallen to levels not seen since Dwight Eisenhower was president. That’s a far cry from 1993, when neighboring West Pittsburg decided to change its name to Bay Point to distance itself from its namesake’s violent crime stigma.

But a review of the department’s own data by this newspaper, and allegations from a former high-ranking officer, raise serious questions about whether the department and city officials fabricated statistics and misled the public about the reality of crime in the Contra Costa County city of more than 67,000 nestled on the south shore of Suisun Bay.

The review shows that, compared with similar cities nearby, Pittsburg places a far higher percentage of its reported crimes, numbering hundreds a year, in a catchall category called “suspicious circumstances,” a move that keeps them from being counted in FBI crime statistics.

A former Pittsburg police lieutenant who has filed a wrongful termination claim against the city alleges the practice is systematic and deliberate, and that officers are taught and pressured to classify certain cases — those with a lack of credible witnesses, workable leads or unlikely prosecutions — in a manner that treats them as if they were not crimes at all. Even a Pittsburg stabbing case that became a homicide when the victim died was initially classified merely as a suspicious circumstance.

The doctored statistics scheme was discussed in command staff meetings and taught to new officers fresh from academies, said attorney Dan Horowitz, who represents Lt. Wade Derby, the former officer making the allegations. He said supervisors would alter reports and pressure rank-and-file officers to follow the policy. Another former Pittsburg police officer who once worked with Derby told a similar story.

Jim Ponzi, a Regis University criminology associate professor and 35-year Denver cop, said that using the “suspicious circumstances” classification looked to him as “another way to hide the crime.”

“The worst part of all of this is the message it sends the public,” Ponzi said after Pittsburg’s practice was described to him. “How can we expect them to believe anything that we say when they find out about things like this?”

In comparison, neighboring Antioch, which experienced a spike in crime at the same time Pittsburg reported its rate was plummeting, classifies far fewer cases as suspicious circumstances. And Richmond, long considered the most crime-plagued city in the county, says it does not use that category at all.

“If the elements of a crime are alleged, we document and report it as the most serious crime it can be, even if it is unsolved,” said Richmond Capt. Mark Gagan.

How to define

There is no standard definition of a suspicious circumstance, and the FBI’s guide to Uniform Crime Reporting, known as UCR, does not discuss it. But other cities that use the classification say it is only for unusual incidents in which police cannot say for sure that a crime occurred.

Pittsburg police officials deny doing anything untoward but would not discuss their reporting practices in detail. The department said it would have to consult with legal counsel before deciding to share even a portion of the suspicious circumstances reports with this newspaper. In California, police reports, though not confidential under law, are often shielded from public view.

Pittsburg police Chief Brian Addington did say that of the 209 suspicious circumstances reports from last year, fewer than 80 involved incidents that included “possible” felony crimes reportable to the FBI, according to a survey his department did following this newspaper’s inquiries. The chief said it has also invited the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office to audit Pittsburg’s 2015 suspicious circumstances reports.

“Whether we examine more years has not been decided,” Contra Costa District Attorney Mark Peterson said.

In an emailed statement, Addington said the city has reviewed Derby’s 32-page claim but could not comment on specific allegations or this newspaper’s findings because of anticipated litigation.

“The Pittsburg Police Department understands the important role of ensuring crime statistics accurately reflect the crimes that occur within our city,” he said in a statement. “Our staff is thoroughly trained on the UCR reporting requirements, and we have quality-control measures in place that ensure UCR crime data that we submit to the Department of Justice is accurate.”

Stabbing incidents

But two Pittsburg police reports obtained by this newspaper indicate that at least some serious crimes are being classified in highly unusual ways.

In each incident, a man was stabbed by unknown assailants, and instead of closing the case as felony aggravated assaults, the cases were listed as suspicious circumstances, helping lower the annual crime statistics sent to the FBI, which catalogs crime data from every police department in the country.

One man later died, leading the department to scramble to launch a belated homicide investigation because it had not fully investigated the assault in the first place, said Horowitz.

“It makes the department look like (it’s) doing a good job when it’s not,” Horowitz said.

At first glance, Pittsburg’s crime data tell the compelling story of a turnaround. For 2014, the most recent FBI crime numbers, the city reported 175 violent crimes. That’s down from 643 such crimes in 1985, the first year the FBI reported crime statistics for individual law enforcement agencies, despite the city’s population growing from 38,876 to 67,509 over that period.

Many in Pittsburg, including Derby, agree that the police force deserves credit for some of the decline. Addington pointed to numerous factors helping lower crime rates: massive downtown redevelopment, more than 120 surveillance cameras in crime hot spots, youth outreach, special enforcement programs and reductions in blight.

The lower crime rate has become a source of community pride, touted at the annual state-of-the-city event. In 2014, then-mayor Sal Evola ended the luncheon at the Elks Lodge by touting Pittsburg’s crime turnaround.

“Pittsburg has had a long-standing stigma of high crimes, but as you see, that is not the case,” he said.

But as the crime rate dipped, the police department’s use of the “suspicious circumstances” category far surpassed its East County neighbor. Pittsburg averaged 245 such incidents a year between 2000 and 2014, according to department numbers. By comparison, Antioch averaged 74 suspicious circumstances cases a year during the same time frame, despite having 40,000 more residents in 2014.

The police agency in Contra Costa’s largest city, Concord, with almost 127,000 residents, registered 177 cases under the “suspicious circumstances” category in 2014, a small fraction of its nearly 21,500 total cases. Compare that with Pittsburg, which had 193 suspicious circumstances cases that year with just under 10,000 cases opened.

“It’s a suspicious circumstance only if a crime did not occur,” Concord police Sgt. Kristen Thomas said.

Rumors that crimes are underreported in Pittsburg have swirled in law enforcement circles for some time; this newspaper inquired about the city’s practices in 2012 but was stymied in part by a lack of cooperation from police, who declined to provide any records in response to a reporter’s request.

Then Derby emerged, outlining in his claim against the city a 28-year career of voicing opposition to internal corruption. He alleges he was pushed to retire in January. Derby, 50, declined to be interviewed for this article.

Through Horowitz, Derby alleges that the police department uses multiple means to manipulate crime stats. Among other methods, he said complaints of crimes were sometimes not responded to, and rapes were often closed as “simple assaults” or suspicious circumstances.

Former Pittsburg police Officer Randall Watkins, who worked with the department for seven years, ending in 2001, said in a phone interview that crime manipulation “directives came from the top and disseminated through to the sergeants.”

Watkins, now a field training officer with the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office, said he wrote a strong-arm robbery report of an ice cream vendor who was beaten and robbed of his money and bicycle, but his superior officer changed his report to misdemeanor battery and theft. He said many of the manipulated crimes involved Hispanic victims with language barriers, and officers were told not to waste their time investigating, and instead classify the crime as a suspicious circumstance.

“They pulled the wool over the public’s eyes. It’s that simple,” Watkins said. “The manipulation of the crime stats had the community believing crime was going down, but in reality we had the same number of calls for service.”

National problem?

Pittsburg is not the only department to be accused of manipulating its crime stats. In the late 1990s, Philadelphia police were audited by the federal government after it was revealed they were cooking their crime numbers.

Lt. Col. David Grossman, a leading trainer for law enforcement agencies across the country, said the practice is not uncommon. He called the manipulation of crime statistics “the single greatest ethical failure in American government today, and it has gone completely unreported at the national level.”

In his claim, Derby alleges the Pittsburg department began massaging the crime stats after former San Francisco police Chief Will Casey took over in 1993 following some turbulent years. The agency wanted to move away from a series of scandals, including officers charged with copying and pasting crime reports on drug cases, and two officers who were convicted of kidnapping and killing a Safeway clerk.

The department issued a Uniform Report Writing Guidelines booklet for officers, which included specific instructions on how to categorize crimes as suspicious circumstances, including:

“Crimes being reported as a felony but are surrounded by circumstances which obscure the facts.”

“Where the elements of the crime are in doubt or not fully met and further information is not available to the investigating officer at the time the report was taken.”

Casey, now a city councilman, called Derby a “jerk” and “not a credible” source. Asked about classifying felonies in the “suspicious circumstances” category, the former chief said in a phone interview: “I certainly don’t remember that.”

“Crime reports were as accurate as they could possibly be. There was no artificial manipulation,” he said.

Former Pittsburg mayor and state Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla, who agrees that crime has declined over the years, voiced concerns about the allegations.

“The department has been able to regain some of the trust and confidence that was lost as a result of past actions; this type of report, if true, simply is a step backward not just for the PD but the image of the city as a whole,” Canciamilla said.

This newspaper obtained the two suspicious circumstances stabbing case files that bolster Derby’s contentions.

On May 1, 2010, 35-year-old Enrique Mendoza was walking west on East Leland Road when someone ran up and stabbed him in the stomach. There was scant suspect information, only a sighting of a man wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, according to the Pittsburg police report.

The case was closed less than 48 hours after the attack and not assigned to investigations, according to the report. That changed when Mendoza died two weeks later on May 13, 2010, at John Muir Medical Center in Concord because of complications from “sepsis, pneumonia and peritonitis due to stab wound of abdomen,” according to his autopsy report. It was ruled a homicide, and Horowitz said the department scrambled to start a murder case.

“With Pittsburg police, it didn’t feel like he was their priority,” Mendoza’s daughter, Jenelle Sierra, said in a phone interview. “I didn’t feel like they were too involved.”

She said that changed after her father died. Eventually, a Bay Point heroin dealer was convicted of murder.

In the second example, on June 10, 2012, Benjamin Alvarado was kidnapped at knifepoint by a woman on the eastbound Highway 4 offramp at San Marcos Boulevard and forced to drive to Antioch. In the Pittsburg police report narrative, the officer wrote that the woman attempted to rob Alvarado, and stabbed him with a knife in the abdomen.

“If you want to keep your aggravated assault numbers down, you do just what the police department did in (this) example,” said Ponzi, after reviewing the two reports.

Contact Matthias Gafni at 925-952-5026. Follow him at Twitter.com/mgafni.