Internet Explorer 11 is not supported

For optimal browsing, we recommend Chrome, Firefox or Safari browsers.

Feds Will Track Police Incidents, But They're Up to Local Departments to Report

The FBI will launch a pilot project early next year to begin collecting use-of-force statistics nationwide and create the first online national database on both deadly and nonfatal interactions the public has with law enforcement.

The FBI will launch a pilot project early next year to begin collecting use-of-force statistics nationwide and create the first online national database on both deadly and nonfatal interactions the public has with law enforcement.

 

“Accurate and comprehensive data on the use of force by law enforcement is essential to an informed and productive discussion about community-police relations,” said Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch in a statement Thursday. “The initiatives we are announcing today are vital efforts toward increasing transparency and building trust between law enforcement and the communities we serve.”

 

But although Lynch can impose financial penalties on law enforcement agencies that fail to report data about “civilians” who died during interactions with authorities or in their custody, the Justice Department cannot require state and local agencies to report the far larger number of such situations that are not fatal. Participation in the new use-of-force program by those agencies is voluntary.

 

The effort to create a comprehensive national use-of-force database follows a number of high-profile police shootings in the past two years of unarmed African Americans. They include 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was fatally shot in Ferguson, Mo., by a white police officer in 2014, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was shot and killed in Cleveland by a white police officer, also in 2014.

 

Controversies also have erupted after deaths that did not involve gunfire. There were protests last year after Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman, died in a county jail in Texas, and a year earlier when Eric Garner, a 43-year-old black man, died after being placed in an apparent chokehold by a New York police officer. The fatal injury of 18-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody last year sparked widespread protests and riots in Baltimore.

 

FBI Director James B. Comey called the lack of comprehensive national data on the use of force by police “unacceptable” and “ridiculous.”

Caroline Cournoyer is GOVERNING's senior web editor.
Special Projects