Should police misconduct and use of force data be publicly available?

The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) has made New York State Police misconduct, discipline, and use-of-force data easily available to the public on their site as a part of their New York Police Transparency Database. They analyzed records and incidents between the years of 2000 and 2020 and made the full dataset publicly available in a searchable and sortable table on their site and downloadable as an Excel spreadsheet.

The New York State Police have routinely tried to block the release of this information even though it was supposed to be accessible to the public. What the NYCLU did was make it even more easily accessible.

Today’s disclosures resulted from the NYCLU and pro bono counsel Latham & Watkins’ 2022 Freedom of Information Law lawsuit against the State Police, the second-largest police force in New York with more than 4,700 uniformed officers. Prior to the repeal of section 50-a of the state civil rights law, such records were regularly withheld by departments incorrectly claiming their disclosure would violate state law. — NYCLU Releases 20 Years of New York State Police Misconduct and Force Records (press release)

The data published includes not only the number of incidents per officer, when the incidents took place, and the disciplinary results but also the police officer’s full names. In this week’s episode of Nuance, we discuss how this type of accountability can benefit the public but also consider how this could scapegoat individual officers for what is a top-down systemic problem.

The findings yielded some interesting results. For example:

• Over half of the officers named in founded misconduct investigations were given no more than a slap on the wrist. Some 29 percent were given a more serious penalty like loss of vacation days or suspension without pay. Ten percent were placed on probation, two percent were terminated, and five percent did not receive any discipline.
• Only 7 percent of the nearly 2,300 misconduct investigations on use-of-force incidents were “founded” by the NYSP’s (New York State Police) internal investigations division, meaning it (the NYSP themselves) determined misconduct occurred.
• Nearly one in three use-of-force incidents arose during traffic stops
• Ten percent of use-of-force incidents between 2000 and 2017 occurred during a mental health response.

View and Download the data from the NYCLU

• New York State Police — Use-of-Force Data https://www.nyclu.org/en/new-york-state-police-use-force-data
• New York State Police – Misconduct and Discipline Data https://www.nyclu.org/en/new-york-state-police-misconduct-and-discipline-data

Do you think this data should be publicly available? How best can we use the information?

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Nuance with Mike Scala and Jay Carter is a weekly video podcast that engages its audience through examination of current events from the unique perspectives of its hosts and guests.

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