FBI EYES SHUTTING DOWN USE-OF-FORCE DATABASE

Lack of police participation puts program in jeopardy

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 the Justice Department “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% 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.”

As of Sept. 30, 81 percent of federal officers were represented in the data, even though only 43 of 114 federal agencies, or about 38 percent, had participated by then, according to the FBI’s website.

The GAO report also says the Justice Department has largely ignored a requirement included in the 1994 crime bill to “acquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers” and “shall publish an annual summary of the data acquired.”

No such summary has been published in at least the past five years, the GAO found. Justice Department officials suggested to the GAO that the national use-of-force program could provide that data, but the program does not differentiate between incidents involving reasonable force and those involving excessive force.

The impetus for the useof-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.

The Washington Post began tracking fatal police shootings in 2015 through media reports and information from police. The Post has found roughly 1,000 fatal shootings per year, more than twice what was being reported annually to the FBI through its Uniform Crime Reporting system.

In 2016, the FBI declared its intent to start capturing its own data. Then-FBI Director James Comey said Americans “actually have no idea whether the number of Black people or Brown people or White people being shot by police” has gone up or down, or if any group is more likely to be shot by police, given the incomplete data available.

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.

The FBI has said it will not publicly report data from any specific agency or incident, only by state. The OMB has said no data can be released if less than 40 percent of all officers are covered. If up to 59 percent of all officers are covered, the FBI “may publish limited information,” the OMB said, “such as the injuries an individual received in the use of force incident, and the type of force that the law enforcement officer used.” If more than 60 percent of officers are covered by the data, the FBI “may publish the most frequently reported responses to questions, expressed in either ratios, percentages or in a list format.” At 80 percent of officers, “the FBI may unconditionally publish collected data,” the OMB said.