A nationwide FBI database designed to track police use-of-force incidents is in jeopardy as communities bypass the initiative. Marin is among them.
The FBI effort, launched in 2016, has not met the threshold for publishing data, the federal Office of Management and Budget said last month.
The nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office reported from 2016 to 2020, the Department of Justice collected and published data on law enforcement’s use of force but did not publish an annual summary of data on excessive force from each year as required by the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
As a result, the program, aimed at tracking use of excessive force nationwide, could be discontinued in December 2022.
In Marin, most law enforcement agencies, including the sheriff’s department, said they do not provide data to the FBI database because such reports are already made to the state.
In California, 30 of 892 agencies provided use-of-force data to the FBI effort in 2019, with officers employed by those agencies representing 31% of law enforcement officers statewide. By 2021, 31 agencies representing 29% of law enforcement officers had reported the data, according to the bureau.
Marin County sheriff’s Sgt. Brenton Schneider said the agency feeds data straight to the state Department of Justice as required by law.
In Marin, Fairfax was the lone department that participated. Chief Rico Tabaranza said his agency “reported zero incidents that meet the threshold.”
In Sausalito, police Chief John Rohrbacher also said the department has not had any qualifying use-of-force incidents to report since 2019. The determination is based on the state’s definition of excessive force as “resulting in the death or serious bodily injury of a person or when a law enforcement officer discharges a firearm at or in the direction of a person.”
The department, along with Novato, Mill Valley and Belvedere, did not submit reports, in part because of the lack of qualifying incidents.
In San Rafael, the police department revised its use-of-force policies after protests in 2020 following the death of George Floyd.
Data collection on use of force began in San Rafael in January 2019, police Lt. Dan Fink said. Since that time, the department has not had any incidents involving shootings or severe bodily injury or death.
Fink said city staff would need to evaluate whether to also participate in the database, since records are already sent to the state.
Tiburon police Chief Ryan Monaghan said his department also does not participate, but is ”not opposed to our voluntary participation in this effort.”
Jack Glaser, a University of California at Berkeley professor who researches criminal justice policy, said he is concerned law enforcement agencies are only reporting incidents of seriously bodily injury, death or weapon discharge under state law, when the FBI aims to collect all incidents involving the use of force.
”There’s a lot more going on and there are a lot of use-of-force incidents that result in considerable indignity to people, and those indignities tend to be racially disparate,” Glaser said.
Glaser said that as a researcher, he is concerned California law enforcement might not recognize that reporting requirements differ between the state law and the FBI database. He said he is “disappointed and concerned” the FBI program might fold, saying more in-depth data could be missed.
He said finding ways of incentivizing compliance could encourage more oversight.
“It seems wise for them to explore different incentives and issue a few years of reports, before giving up,” Glaser said.
John Hamasaki, a lawyer who is on the San Francisco Police Commission, said having comprehensive data from law enforcement agencies is critical to understand incidents in which use of force is employed. He said the Department of Justice could find ways to incentivize law enforcement participation, such as by tying in federal funding.
“A lot of the police shootings and killings have declined in bigger cities, while increasing in more suburban and rural communities,” he said, referring to recent data from the organization Mapping Police Violence. “To me, what that suggests is that the better policy oversight and training has actually made a difference.”
"use" - Google News
January 02, 2022 at 09:15AM
https://ift.tt/3FIwNSS
FBI use-of-force database at risk amid low participation - Marin Independent Journal
"use" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2P05tHQ
https://ift.tt/2YCP29R
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "FBI use-of-force database at risk amid low participation - Marin Independent Journal"
Post a Comment