Recommended Best Practices
Recommendation 8.2: Make data and information publicly available in accessible and alternative formats.
Collecting quality data is the first step toward transparency. Making data publicly available in accessible and alternative formats improves transparency. Communities and departments alike benefit from sharing data and information. Communities are able to scrutinize and understand what their local departments are doing and identify potential problems. Departments, meanwhile, foster discussion and community trust by making data public and easily accessible to all. Specifically, departments should:
Publish policies online in alternative and accessible formats. As the President’s Task Force Report notes, making information about how officers do their jobs electronically available improves transparency and demonstrates a commitment to community collaboration.[i]It also allows community members to scrutinize policies and recommend changes, and it enables departments to reach people who otherwise would not know — or have an opportunity to know — how departments operate. All publicinformation should also be available in alternative and accessible formats.
Because policy manuals are sometimes hundreds of pages long, online versions should contain searchable tables of contents. See, for example, the Minneapolis Police Department’s online Policy & Procedure Manual:
Publish aggregate enforcement data online. Aggregate data let the public know what officers do on the job and what departments prioritize. Data should be aggregated by location, actual or perceived race, gender, and other factors so communities and departments can better understand whether enforcement decisions and strategies disproportionately affect specific groups.[ii]This allows communities to analyze the data and recommend evidence-based policy changes.
No uniform standards currently exist for collecting or reporting basic information or data about police activity, such as officer-involved shootings.[iii]Crime statistics are not always reliable sources of data, nor do they address what officers doin the office and in the field. Reliable enforcement data is even harder to come by; aggregate information about uses of force, stops, searches, summonses, and arrests is not typically readily available. Few departments, meanwhile, publish comprehensive information about complaints, officer misconduct, and discipline.[iv]
Still, some departments and communities have made strides toward providing up-to-date data on areas of community interest and concern. In early 2018, departments in San Jose and Minneapolis began posting use-of-force data online.[v]The Seattle Police Department, meanwhile, publishes online a substantial amount of enforcement data, including contacts with people in mental health crisis, uses of force, hate/bias crimes, and “Terry stops” (i.e., when officers stop people and “frisk” their outer clothing).[vi]
Importantly, the public should be able to interpret and use data and information. Communities and police departments should explore how to present aggregate data in a way that promotes truetransparency through information dashboards, maps, graphical interfaces that use icons, menus, and other visual graphics, and the like. They should also make raw data available for download so researchers, academics, and other interested parties can access and analyze it.
Collect and publish data on hate crimes and incidents. To protect marginalized groups, departments should collect, track, map, and publish data about hate crimes and incidents, especially in light of the increases in hate crimes since 2016.[vii]Without these data, it is difficult — if not impossible — to track patterns of bias against people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, or other characteristics.
If departments don’t track patterns of bias, they will be less able to identify and address them. In 2008, for example, four teens murdered Lucero Marcelo, an Ecuadorian immigrant in New York. A federal investigation found that the Suffolk County (New York) Police Department had done little to address or investigate a pattern of similar attacks that had taken place against Latinxs in the previous year.[viii]In a settlement, the department agreed to collect and analyze hate crime data.[ix]
Share data with allied organizations and maintain public databases. The Police Data Initiative — a partnership of the National Police Foundation, the U.S. Department of Justice Office on Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), and other nonprofit organizations — illustrates how data collection sheds light on police operations.[x]Launched in 2015, the initiative collects a variety of data and provides it to communities and researchers in user-friendly formats. Currently, 130 police departments voluntarily participate because “they have committed to working closely with their communities to leverage open data for purposes of enhancing trust, understanding, innovation, and the co-production of public safety.”[xi]
[i]President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing 2-3 (2015), https://cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/taskforce/taskforce_finalreport.pdf.
[ii]See President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing 13 (2015), https://cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/taskforce/taskforce_finalreport.pdf(“To embrace a culture of transparency, law enforcement agencies should make all department policies available for public review and regularly post on the department’s website information about stops, summonses, arrests, reported crime, and other law enforcement data aggregated by demographics.”).
[iii]Julie Tate et al., How The Washington Post Is Examining Police Shootings in the United States, Wash. Post, Jul. 7, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-the-washington-post-is-examining-police-shootings-in-the-united-states/2016/07/07/d9c52238-43ad-11e6-8856-f26de2537a9d_story.html(“The FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention log fatal shootings by police, but officials acknowledge that their data is incomplete. In 2015, The Post documented more than twice as many fatal shootings by police as had been recorded by the FBI.”).
[iv]SeeRobert Lewis et. al., Is Police Misconduct a Secret in Your State?, WNYC News, (Oct. 15, 2015), https://www.wnyc.org/story/police-misconduct-records/(showing that only 12 states—Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin—generally make police disciplinary records available to the public).
[v]San Jose Police Department Introduces Web Access to Use of Force Data, CBS SF Bay Area, Jan. 10, 2018, http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/01/10/san-jose-police-department-use-of-force-data/; Brandt Williams, Minneapolis Police Use of Force Data Now Online, MPRNews, Nov. 14, 2017, https://www.mprnews.org/story/2017/11/14/mpd-use-of-force-data-now-online.
[vi]Seattle Police Dep’t, Information & Data, https://www.seattle.gov/police/information-and-data(last visited Jan. 10, 2019).
[vii]Jon Eligon, Hate Crimes Increase for the Third Consecutive Year, F.B.I. Reports, N.Y. Times, Nov. 13, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/us/hate-crimes-fbi-2017.html.
[viii]Sandra Peddie, Despite Progress After Hate Crime, SCPD and Hispanics Struggle with Trust, Newsday, Nov. 2, 2018, https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/ms13-lucero-suffolk-police/.
[ix]Agreement Between the U.S. Dep’t of Justice and Suffolk Cty. Police Dep’t, 7 (E.D. N.Y. Jan. 13, 2014), https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2014/01/23/suffolk_agreement_1-13-14.pdf.
[x]SeePolice Data Initiative, https://www.policedatainitiative.org(last visited Dec. 13, 2018); see alsoPress Release, White House Office of the Press Secretary, FACT SHEET: White House Police Data Initiative Highlights New Commitments (Apr. 21, 2016) (stating that the Police Data initiative launched in 2015), https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/22/fact-sheet-white-house-police-data-initiative-highlights-new-commitments.
[xi]Police Data Initiative, Participating Agencies, https://www.policedatainitiative.org/participating-agencies/(last visited Jan. 10, 2018).