FBI’S police use-of-force database may cease

WASHINGTON — In an attempt to create a definitive database on how often police officers use force on citizens, the FBI launched the National Use-of-force Data Collection program in 2019, imploring police departments to submit details on every incident, not just fatal shootings. But the failure of police and federal agencies to send their data to the FBI puts the program in jeopardy of being shut down next year without ever releasing a single statistic, a new report by the Government Accountability Office says.

The program was required to obtain data representing 60 percent of law enforcement officers, to meet a standard of quality set by the Office of Management and Budget, or else stop the effort by the end of 2022. In 2019, the data covered 44 percent of local, state, federal and tribal officers, and last year the total increased to 55 percent, according to the program’s website. So far this year, the data represents 57 percent of all officers, the FBI said Wednesday.

“Due to insufficient participation from law enforcement agencies,” the GAO wrote, “the FBI faces risks that it may not meet the participation thresholds” established by OMB, “and therefore may never publish use of force incident data.”

The Justice Department said in its response to the report that “the FBI believes the agreed upon thresholds will be met to allow the data collection to continue, and is taking steps to increase participation in data collection efforts.” The response by Assistant Attorney General Lee J. Lofthus also said that Justice “sent a letter to federal law enforcement agencies encouraging their participation.”

On Wednesday, the FBI said in an emailed response to questions that “each day is a new snapshot in time,” and that as of Oct. 18, the data represented 54 percent of officers. But by Wednesday, the “participation rates are at 57.15 percent for 2021,” the FBI said.

“I’d be surprised if they didn’t make 60 percent,” said Bill Brooks, chief of the Norwood, Mass., police and a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police board of directors. He said a key problem is that many agencies that have no force incidents are failing to input “zero reports” each month, so the agency is counted as not participating. The IACP has long supported the data collection, and low participation numbers “make us look like we’re hiding something, when in reality I don’t think that’s the case.”

The impetus for the use-of-force data program was the fact that no government agency was tracking how often police killed citizens. Law enforcement officials, criminologists and other policing experts, said solid data was needed to know just how often police used force, and whether high-profile incidents such as the killing of Eric Garner in New York, Laquan Mcdonald in Chicago and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, all in 2014, were aberrations or the norm.

“Transparency and police data are what lead to accountability,” said Nancy La Vigne, executive director of the Council on Criminal Justice’s Task Force on Policing, last summer. “When you don’t know what use-of-force cases are happening, it’s difficult to know if you’re making improvements.”

The FBI conducted a pilot program to collect data in 2017, and opened it up to all law enforcement agencies in 2019. The request for data is not minimal: the FBI wants the location and circumstances of every force incident, and detailed information on both the subject and the officers involved.

Police officials have told the FBI that inputting the data can be time-consuming or difficult, the bureau reported after its pilot program. Art Acevedo, the former police chief of Houston and Miami, said that Houston police estimated they would need “three full-time employees to go through everything to pull all the data.”

Last year, after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, President Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for a database “concerning instances of excessive use of force,” even though the FBI program was underway, and also said federal funds should be withheld from agencies that fail to contribute. The order was not addressed in the GAO report, but the idea of tying participation to federal funding was endorsed by many police officials.