Sep 16, 2009 11:00 pm US/Eastern
I-Team Uncovers Truth About School Violence Stats
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
A six month
CBS4 I-Team investigation is raising serious questions about how truthful the state of Florida is being about violence in our schools.
The
I-Team discovered wide discrepancies between the numbers of violent incidents that anyone can see on the state's website and actual police reports of violent activities on school campuses.
I-Team investigator Stephen Stock uncovered the truth behind the numbers.
November 27, 2006: A violent fight ends at South Dade High School with a 17-year-old student rushed to the hospital while the suspect, another student, faced felony assault charges.
But you would never know the assault happened if you visited Florida's Department of Education's website. It's a website that tracks violent incidents at individual schools statewide.
You can see the website and the data tracking site by clicking the links here:
FLDOE WebsiteFSU Criminology CenterIn fact, according to the Florida Department of Education's website, it's as if this assault at South Dade High never happened.
According to the latest data available of individual violent incidents for schools, there were no assaults at South Dade High in 2006-2007.
In fact, the state website shows only 3 instances of battery and one drug possession case.
The trouble is the
I-Team learned that Miami-Dade Schools police filed official incident reports on 20 cases of battery and 17 cases of drug possession in 2006-2007.
"To see this, this is...this is shocking, appalling and this should not occur," said Miami-Dade School Board District 7 Representative Ana Rivas Logan. "This should not happen."
And the discrepancies at South Dade High pale in comparison to other schools in Miami-Dade.
At Northwestern High School state data shows one battery. Police filed 31 battery reports.
Miami Norland High: State website data shows no batteries reported. But police wrote up 24 battery reports.
DOE's website shows 1 battery case at Allapattah Middle School. Miami-Dade Schools police filed reports for 22 cases.
Homestead Senior High 19 police reports of battery. The state's website shows only two.
And it's not just battery cases. The state website shows South Dade High had one punishment for drug possession. But the I-Team learned that Schools Police filed reports on 17 cases of drug possession.
At Miami-Killian Senior High, police filed 10 reports of drug possession. But if you looked up drugs on the state website you would think there were zero cases of drugs there.
"It looks to me like somebody in Tallahassee is perhaps fudging numbers," said School Board member Logan. "That's what it looks like to me. To make it appear that our schools are actually, that some of our schools because some of our schools are safe, but that some of our schools are actually safer than they really are."
"Oh my God, it's worse than I ever imagined," said teacher Christopher Radney.
Radney has been a teacher in Miami-Dade schools for years.
Several years ago he was attacked by a student and ever since, Radney has suspected that the real numbers of violent incidents in South Florida schools have always been downplayed.
"People have no idea what we (teachers) are really facing day in and day out, and apparently neither does the state (of Florida)," Radney said. "And God knows whether downtown knows what we're facing. This could be why people think "you're being wimps about this." No we're not."
The
I-Team found similar discrepancies in data for Broward County schools.
We compared raw violence data buried on archived spreadsheets at DOE to what's on the easily available website. Because of the way the incidents are categorized, we were only able to compare total violent incident counts.
Deerfield Beach High reported 15 more incidents than the state website (136 to 121).
At Charles Flanagan and Cypress Bay High Schools there were 13 more police reports at each school than reported by the state.
In all, 48 different schools in Broward County had higher police reports than what DOE's website shows.
Chief Charlie Hurley/Miami Dade Schools Police: "My numbers are accurate," said Miami-Dade Schools Police Chief Charles "Charlie" Hurley. "It enables us to be able to decide strategically where to place our officers. How we assign our cops is one function of the data."
"The data doesn't tell the entire story but it certainly is a good barometer for how we conduct operations," Chief Hurley said.
Chief Hurley says his office as well as parents and teachers depend on accurate violence data.
"This type of information should be available for public consumption (for) parents. I'm a parent. I'm not just a police executive and I want to know just exactly what is going on in our community."
Florida state officials say the discrepancies are because of different definitions and different criteria.
You can see the actual police report violence data from Miami-Dade Schools police here in
PDF Format:
Miami-Dade Schools A-CMiami-Dade Schools D-HMiami-Dade Schools J-LMiami-Dade Schools MMiami-Dade Schools N-ZHere's the
spreadsheet for Miami-Dade Schools in Microsoft Excel FormatClick here for Broward County data in PDF Format
You'll find spreadsheets showing all the schools where there are discrepancies between police and the state DOE violence website data.
The I-Team tried for more than two months to get state officials to sit down and answer more detailed questions about these discrepancies. They finally agreed to talk after our story deadline.
We'll have their full explanation plus talk to state top lawmakers in charge of education in a special report Monday night on
CBS4. 
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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