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Showing Original Post only (View all)What I've Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings [View all]
I've been lied to and delayed by state, county and local law enforcement agenciesalmost every time. They've blatantly broken public records laws, and then thumbed their authoritarian noses at the temerity of a citizen asking for information that might embarrass the agency.
http://gawker.com/what-ive-learned-from-two-years-collecting-data-on-poli-1625472836
What I've Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings
382,354324
D. Brian Burghart
Filed to: POLICE BRUTALITY
COPS
DEATHS
PROJECTS
8/22/14 1:25pm
A few days ago, Deadspin's Kyle Wagner began to compile a list of all police-involved shootings in the U.S. He's not the only one to undertake such a project: D. Brian Burghart, editor of the Reno News & Review, has been attempting a crowdsourced national database of deadly police violence. We asked Brian to write about what he's learned from his project.
It began simply enough. Commuting home from my work at Reno's alt-weekly newspaper, the News & Review, on May 18, 2012, I drove past the aftermath of a police shootingin this case, that of a man named Jace Herndon. It was a chaotic scene, and I couldn't help but wonder how often it happened.
I went home and grabbed my laptop and a glass of wine and tried to find out. I found nothinga failure I simply chalked up to incompetent local media.
- snip -
I started to search in earnest. Nowhere could I find out how many people died during interactions with police in the United States. Try as I might, I just couldn't wrap my head around that idea. How was it that, in the 21st century, this data wasn't being tracked, compiled, and made available to the public? How could journalists know if police were killing too many people in their town if they didn't have a way to compare to other cities? Hell, how could citizens or police? How could cops possibly know "best practices" for dealing with any fluid situation? They couldn't.
- snip -
Database & Last Name Check
Read more fatalencounters.org
The biggest thing I've taken away from this project is something I'll never be able to prove, but I'm convinced to my core: The lack of such a database is intentional. No governmentnot the federal government, and not the thousands of municipalities that give their police forces license to use deadly forcewants you to know how many people it kills and why.
It's the only conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence. What evidence? In attempting to collect this information, I was lied to and delayed by the FBI, even when I was only trying to find out the addresses of police departments to make public records requests. The government collects millions of bits of data annually about law enforcement in its Uniform Crime Report, but it doesn't collect information about the most consequential act a law enforcer can do.
I've been lied to and delayed by state, county and local law enforcement agenciesalmost every time. They've blatantly broken public records laws, and then thumbed their authoritarian noses at the temerity of a citizen asking for information that might embarrass the agency. And these are the people in charge of enforcing the law.
The second biggest thing I learned is that bad journalism colludes with police to hide this information. The primary reason for this is that police will cut off information to reporters who tell tales. And a reporter can't work if he or she can't talk to sources. It happened to me on almost every level as I advanced this year-long Fatal Encounters series through the News & Review. First they talk; then they stop, then they roadblock.
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What I've Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings [View all]
Hissyspit
Dec 2014
OP
Right, that's a good question. In the case of NYC, de Blasio has been major just 11 months.
eomer
Dec 2014
#42
Sounds like a job Congress COULD DO. I didn't say would do because we all know that they won't.
Dustlawyer
Dec 2014
#17
Thanks for the link (and the prod). Bookmarked for review later today. I don't have
KingCharlemagne
Dec 2014
#21
They are not the only ones who have learned that there is no data on the murder of US Citizens
sabrina 1
Dec 2014
#26
Last about the last paragraph - the reason your locat news says things like "Police were forced to .
Liberal_in_LA
Dec 2014
#37