Nation - Georgia Athens police fed up with increased fake crime reports

By Joe Johnson Athens Banner-Herald ATHENS, Ga. (AP) -- A University of Georgia law student flagged down a taxi driver and pleaded with him to call 911 because she'd been beaten and robbed by a man near her home on Riverbend Parkway. A soldier who was visiting Athens befriended strangers at a downtown bar, and after they left together, the other men robbed him at knifepoint in an alley, then made him withdraw more money from an ATM. A man was kidnapped at gunpoint in East Athens by a trio of masked robbers who forced him to drive to various ATMs and withdraw a total of $1,000, then led him to a crack house where he stayed several hours before the abductors let him go. At first, those reports looked like a scary wave of violent crime, but it turns out the tales were more suited for the fiction section than for true crime. More people in Clarke County seem to be fabricating tales of assaults and robberies these days, and police have become more aggressive in proving the lies and bringing the pretenders to justice, according to police officials. "This is becoming an epidemic, and now we're taking a stance," said Athens-Clarke police Capt. Clarence Holeman, commanding officer of the Centralized Criminal Investigations division. "If we investigate a case and find it's false, we will pursue it until we have enough to arrest someone because they are tying up a lot of people's time, wasting a lot of money and equipment, when we can be focusing on real crime," Holeman said. People invent crimes for lots of reasons, like to hide spending from spouses or to keep embarrassing secrets. Holeman's division investigates so-called person crimes -- rapes, child abuse, assault, robbery and other violent offenses -- which take more time and resources to solve than property crimes. Person crimes impact the entire police department, Holeman said, from patrol officers who take initial reports, secure crime scenes and look for witnesses and suspects, to members of the forensics unit, who find and collect physical evidence. Investigators can spend days and even months lining up interviews, pursuing leads and analyzing whatever was collected at the crime scene or learned later on. Detectives get frustrated and even angry when they realize they'd been chasing shadows. "We put a lot of energy into crimes like these," Holeman said. "If a person takes the time to file a complaint that they've been robbed or assaulted, I want to believe them, because that's what we do." In the past, police would sometimes let it slide if someone was caught lying about a serious crime, but not anymore. The tipping point came last summer, when the UGA law student reported she was beaten, kicked and robbed on College Station Road as she walked home from her job after midnight. A detective spent a month on the case before the woman admitted she injured herself and reported she'd been robbed in a bid to win the sympathy of a husband who wanted a divorce. That woman wasn't charged, but since then, police have arrested about 10 people for falsely reporting a crime. That includes the man who claimed he was kidnapped, robbed and taken to a crack house. He made up the tale to cover up the fact that he spent the proceeds of his mother's income tax return on a prostitute. Last month, a UGA student was charged after he falsely reported he was beat up and robbed as he walked toward downtown. He actually hurt himself when he blacked out drunk, and a friend told him he could get free medical treatment at the University Health Center if he filed a police report that he'd been assaulted. The soldier lied about being robbed downtown because he threw around a lot of money at a local strip joint, but didn't want his wife to know how he had spent their savings. Police didn't charge him because his U.S. Army superiors assured them that they would take care of any discipline. False reports don't just waste police time and taxpayer dollars, they inflate the crime rate and harm the community, Holeman said. Made-up crimes typically involve suspects who are black men with masks and hoodies, which play on people's fears and stereotypes, he said. Or the crime supposedly happened downtown or in a neighborhood where residents predominantly are black. "It makes the general public think that some places are more dangerous than others, when essentially it's not true," Holeman said. "It gives Athens the stigma that it's overrun with crime when it's not." Despite the problems false reports cause, filing one is just a misdemeanor, and people convicted of fabricating a tale often get probation with no jail time, according to Holeman. Athens-Clarke Solicitor General C.R. Chisholm, who prosecutes misdemeanors in State Court, would support any legislative effort to make falsely reporting a felony crime a felony offense, he said. "What bothers me the most is when someone gets picked up based on those false reports and they have to go through the stress of interrogation by police and the stress of a possible felony conviction," Chisholm said. The prosecutor vowed he would seek jail time and increased community service hours for anyone convicted of falsely reporting a crime. Published: Tue, Mar 2, 2010

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