Crimbrary

Can Big Data Stop Bad Cops?
" This article is part of an ongoing examination by The Washington Post of fatal shootings by police. In 2015, The Post began tracking cases nationwide and compiled a database of all fatal shootings by officers in the line of duty. The project has expanded this year to include details about the officers involved. View the 2016 database here.

The Justice Department’s investigation of Baltimore police this month rebuked the agency for an entrenched culture of discriminatory policing. Deep within their findings, Justice investigators singled out a core failure: Baltimore’s system for identifying troubled officers was broken and existed in name only.

In Baltimore, Justice found that critical disciplinary records were excluded from its early intervention system, that police supervisors often intervened only after an officer’s behavior became egregious and that when they did, the steps they took were inadequate....

...The problems with Baltimore’s early intervention system are not isolated to police in that city. In numerous departments nationwide, police have failed to use early intervention systems effectively, Justice has found. Since 1994, 36 civil rights investigations by Justice discovered that local agencies had deeply flawed early intervention systems or no system in place at all, according to a review of those investigations by The Washington Post."

View the DOJ Report