As part of the Obama administration’s push for improved policing in the wake of highly-publicized police shootings, the White House last year launched the Police Data Initiative and asked local law enforcement agencies to voluntarily provide, and publicly post, their statistics on use-of-force incidents and other interactions with citizens.
The idea was that greater transparency would lead to greater citizen confidence in the police, with more public support and fewer critical incidents.
But a year after the project was launched, only 53 jurisdictions have committed to it, covering more than 41 million people. New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Montgomery County are on the list, but many others are not. As in about 17,000 others, with police jurisdictions covering more than 260 million people. Continue…
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