A two-month Chatham-Kent Police Services review into unfounded sexual assaults finds the issue is not as bad as first thought.
Chief Gary Conn says 55 of the 187 cases between 2010 and 2014 were not classified properly and the system will be fine-tuned moving forward.
Conn says there were no cases found where charges could have been laid and as a result were not.
"We found some cases where there was duplication where they could have been classified as something else. For example, unsubstantiated or as police assistance or police advice," says Conn.
Chatham-Kent police's unfounded sexual assault cases went down from nearly 31% to almost 22% after the review.
Conn says the cases have been re-classified and the new percentage is now below the provincial average but still slightly higher than the national average.
"We've amended some of the things in our procedures to ensure we don't have any more duplication of cases," he says. "We've now added that on an annual basis. Our UCR analyst will be reviewing all sexual assault cases and we average about 100 a year."
Conn says these matters are taken very seriously and there will be an annual review of the procedures along with other outside measures to provide clarification.
"POLIS, which is the police information and statistics committee of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, are working with Stats Canada right now about some of the concerns with the UCR uniform crime reporting, coding and classification," Conn says.