FU - FairAndUNbalanced.com

Earlier this month, the Washington Post ran a story called "The trick to D.C. police force's 94% closure rate for 2011 homicides"

But an examination of District homicides found that the department’s closure rate is a statistical mishmash that makes things seem much better than they are.

Metropolitan Police Chief Kathy Lanier took exception to the premise of the story. Her letter was published on Friday.

On Feb. 19, The Post published a front-page article headlined “The trick to D.C.’s homicide closure rate,” suggesting that the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) was somehow tricking the public by announcing that it had a 94 percent homicide closure rate. To support its slanted claims, the article used misleading and inflammatory quotes from ill-informed sources. Furthermore, the writer left out information supplied by my department that would have invalidated the assertions contained in the story.

As chief of police, it is my duty to respond, to explain the truth and to defend the tireless work of the members of the MPD.

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By late Saturday, the web edition of the article had been prepended with a pretty long note walking back the fundamental assertion of the article.

via Washington CityPaper's morning links

Awkward! The Washington Post walks back the premise of its big homicide-closure rate story.

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