After numerous questionable shootings of black men and the ensuing protests across the country, the Justice Dept. announced on Thursday it will create a project to track use of force interactions online.
“Accurate and comprehensive data on the use of force by law enforcement is essential to an informed and productive discussion about community-police relations,” said Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch in a statement Thursday. “The initiatives we are announcing today are vital efforts toward increasing transparency and building trust between law enforcement and the communities we serve.”
But although Lynch can impose financial penalties on law enforcement agencies that fail to report data about “civilians” who died during interactions with authorities or in their custody, the Justice Department cannot require state and local agencies to report the far larger number of such situations that are not fatal. Participation in the new use-of-force program by those agencies is voluntary.
The lack of accurate statistics on police use of force in the United States is also, quite frankly, embarrassing. While the Washington Post created a database of police murders last year and The Guardian maintains one as well, those are both media companies, not governmental entities. And The Guardian is way over in bloody England, for goodness sakes.