Police data

But long before Trump announced his bid for president, law enforcement leaders across the country were caught flatfooted by the new era of scrutiny ushered in by the police shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014.

For years, the data on police shootings collected by the FBI was woefully incomplete. Comey in 2015 said it was “embarrassing and ridiculous” that law enforcement couldn’t provide national data on the number of people shot and killed by police and he said it was harming its relationship with minority communities. He called it “unacceptable” that news organizations were providing the most accurate information on the subject.

Comey vowed to fix the problem, and a committee of local, state and federal law enforcement leaders was formed to develop a national collection program. They met for almost two years to develop the new data collection system

that is intended to collect detailed information anytime an officer shoots and kills or seriously injures a person.

Keenan said when he and others in law enforcement associations across the country learned in the spring that the project had run into problems with the administration, they appealed directly to Sessions.

They made clear that the national data collection system was something state and local police recognized as critical to measure police

use of force and understand trends.

“What law enforcement is tired of is relying on the media for officer-use-of-force data,” Keenan said. “Having data that is accurate based on the case reports is imperative.”

The appeals to Sessions by the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, of which the GBI is a member, as well groups such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police, whose incoming president is LaGrange Police Chief Lou Dekmar, seemed to help.

Even after Comey’s firing, the data collection project was revived and moved forward to the pilot launch in July. The FBI declined to comment about the project, but said 72 state and local law enforcement agencies across the country are participating, as well as some federal agencies.

Keenan said during a recent conference call about the project that Georgia was identified as the state with the most participants. Currently, 19 agencies in Georgia have agreed to provide detailed data to the system when they have a serious shooting. The initial pilot project is expected to last six months.

Keenan said the program is voluntary, which raises the possibility that some police shootings will not be captured in the collection. GBI investigates almost all police shootings and will have the ability to input data from those case files as well.

“Everyone I call personally signs up immediately,” Keenan said. “They know how important this is.”

YIN BOGU / XINHUA 2016 Former FBI Director James Comey initiated the National Use-of-Force Data Collection Project after calling the lack of information on police shootings “embarrassing and ridiculous” in 2015.