California Launches Mandatory Data Collection For Police Use-of-Force (seattletimes.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the AP: All 800 police departments in California must begin using a new online tool launched Thursday to report and help track every time officers use force that causes serious injuries... The tool, named URSUS for the bear on California's flag, includes fields for the race of those injured and the officers involved, how their interaction began and why force was deemed necessary.

"It's sort of like TurboTax for use-of-force incidents," said Justin Erlich, a special assistant attorney general overseeing the data collection and analysis. Departments must report the data under a new state law passed last November. Though some departments already tracked such data on their own, many did not... "As a country, we must engage in an honest, transparent, and data-driven conversation about police use of force," California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a news release.
It's an open source tool developed by Bayes Impact, and California plans to share the code with other interested law enforcement agencies across the country. Only three other states currently require their police departments to track data about use-of-force incidents, "but their systems aren't digital, and in Colorado's case, only capture shootings."

Comments

Bigger problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This is mostly due to the idea that unarmed blacks are killed more often by cops than unarmed whites. But the data are scarce and police killings are so rare that it's hard to make this claim with any accuracy. The 800 pound elephant in the room that groups like Black Lives Matter refuse to address is that there's far more violent crime committed by blacks than other races, even when controlling for factors like socioeconomic status. Where's the outrage over all of the violent crime? Moreover, people who mention these statistics are usually dismissed as being racist, to avoid addressing these uncomfortable issues. Perhaps I should kneel and raise my first during the national anthem until progress is made to stop violent crime by blacks against unarmed whites, which is orders of magnitude more common than the killing of unarmed blacks by police.

Re:Bigger problem

[Anonymous Coward]

OK Barb, I see that your hatred of poor American's is deeply ingrained and that you will go to ridiculous lengths to defend your unwarranted position that lead contamination of inner city slums had a major impact on the people who live there, leading to furtherance of violence and poverty.

Just in case anybody else is interested in the overwhelming evidence counter to Barb's position can read any of these articles:
https://www.in.gov/isdh/files/Pb_behavior_problems_and_violence_fact_sheet.pdf
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-caused-americas-violent-crime-epidemic/#1a63205b63b2
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jfeigenbaum/files/feigenbaum_muller_lead_crime.pdf
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-lead-poisoning-science-met-20150605-story.html
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/07/violent-crime-lead-poisoning-british-export
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/0900625/

Re:And What Will Come of It?

[tinkerton]

There's another reason why collecting data is not enough.The police rules of engagement can move along a spectrum from military-like(enemy territory) to police-like(working for the public). I think they shifted a lot towards military-like rules: as soon as a potential risk has been acknowledged the person with the badge has the right to kill. So maybe one should ask european cops what they think of US cops killing and then their chiefs defending the actions.