What do San Antonio, Albuquerque, and Tucson have that El Paso doesn’t?
A police department that participates in the federal Police Data Initiative.
As part of the Obama administration’s push for improved policing in the wake of highly-publicized police shootings, the White House last year launched the Police Data Initiative and asked local law enforcement agencies to voluntarily provide, and publicly post, their statistics on use-of-force incidents and other interactions with citizens. The idea was that greater transparency would lead to greater citizen confidence in the police, with more public support and fewer critical incidents.
But a year after the project was launched, only 53 jurisdictions have committed to it, covering more than 41 million people. New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Montgomery County are on the list, but many others are not. As in about 17,000 others, with police jurisdictions covering more than 260 million people. The White House presented the numbers in a public briefing Friday with administration officials and police commanders.
The FBI has acknowledged that, in its national gathering of crime statistics, it does not have a reliable count of police shootings, but that won’t happen until at least 2017. So as part of the president’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, two recommendations were “using open data to increase transparency, build community trust and support innovation” and “better using technology, such as early warning systems, to identify problems, increase internal accountability, and decrease inappropriate uses of force.”
Statistics. Data. Information. Sounds like a good idea, right? The more you know. . . .
So what’s the problem? Seems like the Safest City in America would love to share.
Check the article for the 53 communities participating.
Albuquerque’s police department has killed 28 people since 2010 and have been involved in as many non lethal shootings so in all fairness, that department desperately needs some transparency and changes in policy/training.