Inexcusably late, the FBI finally has announced plans to track violent police incidents, including shootings, that involve citizens. Better and more complete data can only help. But it shouldn’t just stop with the FBI, and it shouldn’t just be limited
Inexcusably late, the FBI finally has announced plans to track violent police incidents, including shootings, that involve citizens. Better and more complete data can only help. But it shouldn’t just stop with the FBI, and it shouldn’t just be limited to counting shootings.
The current dearth of information about police use of force hurts this nation, now roiled by protests over highly publicized police shootings of young, mostly black men, and the pushback by conservatives who think there’s a “war on police.”
FBI Director James Comey has called the lack of information “ridiculous” and “embarrassing.” It is precisely that, and inexcusable in an age where more numbers are available than ever before, if only someone has the presence of mind to collect them — and if police departments can be made to give them up.
There is much to praise in the new data collection idea as well as much to be teased out in the details. The hope is to get the new reports implemented by 2017. That may be too optimistic, according to criminologist Richard Rosenfeld, of the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
But it’s a start at doing something long overdue and desperately needed, something that was recommended by the President’s Commission on 21st Century Policing and the Ferguson Commission. Rosenfeld is encouraged that Comey is committed to corralling the needed data.
While he’s at it, Comey should take a look at a data-set compiled by Chicago’s Invisible Institute’s Citizens Police Data Project. The institute, over the objections of the Chicago Police Department and city officials, used lawsuits and open-records requests to compile a complete five-year record of citizen complaints against police officers — everything from First Amendment violations to excessive use of force.
It has long been suspected that most complaints against police are generated by a relative handful of officers. Until now, there have been no data to prove this so-called “bad apple” theory. But the Chicago study strongly suggests that somewhere between 90 and 99 percent of all cops do their jobs fairly. Repeat offenders make up a small fraction of the 12,000-plus officers on the force.
Without complete data it is impossible to know how well officers serve the people they have sworn to protect, or to understand the risks that officers face. The public, the law enforcement and the nation deserve to know much more.
