Report: Most NC police agencies fail to disclose use-of-force data, hurting effort to better understand policing

The Department of Justice is lagging behind on publishing information related to excessive use of force, a watchdog organization found.

The watchdog agency found, during that time period, officials did not assign roles and responsibilities for publishing a summary or the data.

The report, prepared under the authority of the Comptroller General, noted that “assigning and communicating responsibility for publishing such data would help DOJ meet the law’s requirements and develop useful data for the Congress and the public.”

The lack of data being reported is disconcerting to researchers and activists who believe it can be used to better understand policing in America.

"The Department [of Justice] ... has worked tirelessly to investigate and bring civil and criminal enforcement actions to hold law enforcement agencies and individual law enforcement officers accountable where they have engaged in unlawful misconduct, including the use of excessive force," Lee J. Lofthus, an Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice wrote in an email published in the final report.

The watchdog group put forth 11 recommendations for the Department of Justice including ensuring data collected and released includes demographic information as well assessing why there is a delay in reporting the data. The DOJ concurred with most.

In 2016, the FBI launched a new data collection effort for information relating to law enforcement use of force incidents. However, since agencies voluntarily report the data, it has lacked.

“We're as good as our data,” said Dr. Hunter Boehme, a criminologist at North Carolina Central University. “I would say there's a lack of data collection and storage and whether they want to report this.”

"Without reliable and accurate reporting from every law enforcement agency about use of force, we cannot achieve our vision of a state where no community has to fear the police," Ann Webb, Senior Policy Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina told WRAL.

North Carolina has more than 500 law enforcement agencies ranging from sheriff's offices to campus police and city and municipal departments.

Boehme said many agencies in our state are considered small - with fewer than 50 total personnel - and don't have the manpower or budget for data collection, storage and analysis.

"When you have a small police department, they're more worried about keeping the lights on, protecting the community, and patrolling," Boehme said.

Due to insufficient data collection from agencies across the nation, however, the FBI hasn't met thresholds set by the Office of Management and Budget for publishing use of force data or continuing the effort past December 2022. The Government Accountability Office found that the bureau doesn't have alternatives for collecting or publishing data in the future.

In an email published in the report, Lofthus, the Assistant Attorney General with the DOJ, said the FBI feels confident thresholds will be met and they're "taking steps to increase participation in data collection efforts."

The Department of Justice didn't respond to inquiries about this report or their plans by the time of publication. WRAL also posed questions to the Fraternal Order of Police about transparency but also have not heard back.

The data relating to use of force is not only for public consumption but also government purposes including funding and training. The Department of Justice doesn't allocate grant funding specifically for reducing use of force but there are a number of other agencies do.

Between 2016 and 2020, several congressional reports directed the Department of Justice to collect information from agencies so they can better understand training related to use of force as well as implicit bias and de-escalation.

For example, as the complete GAO report notes one grant - BJA’s Strategies for Policing Innovation - "provides funding for evidence-based practices, data, and technology to help law enforcement agencies identify and address their most pressing issues." The program awarded seven grants, totaling more than $4.7 million to agencies so they could purchase body-worn cameras or participate in specialized training relating to de-escalation.

The Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 (DCRA) requires states, like North Carolina, that receive certain federal funding to report information on the deaths of individuals in the custody of law enforcement agencies, including deaths that were the result of law enforcement’s use of force. As the N.C. Watchdog Reporting Network, which WRAL is a part of, found, state officials refuse to release the information.

The agencies are supposed to fill out forms for any sort of in-custody death whether it’s the result of a police shooting or natural causes in a jail. Those forms are collected and sent to the DOJ, where a national database has been created which is intended to increase transparency.

More than six years after signing the act into law, the federal government has failed to publish its findings or release any data. In North Carolina, the administration of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has refused to release its own state-level data, citing a broad federal confidentiality law covering statistics collected to improve the criminal justice system that, so far, hasn't been challenged in court.

Additionally, the new state budget has an item which creates a database tracking so-called critical incidents - a public log of the times officers kill or injure someone. However, that database will not be made publicly available. It is only for internal law enforcement use.

"Fundamentally, the police cannot police themselves, and compliance with reporting requirements is essential to creating true accountability," Webb, with the ACLU said.

Of the 11 recommendations put forth by the Government Accountability Office, the DOJ agreed upon nine.

"Only a small fraction of complaints or reports about law enforcement misconduct submitted by members of the public fall within the Department's statutory and merit federal investigation," Lofthus said.

While the DOJ agreed to recommendations like that it should establish a timeliness goal for staff to initially review incoming allegation, the department does not believe it should "require staff to use information from allegations within the department's jurisdiction received across DOJ to identify potential patterns of systemic law enforcement misconduct and analyze trends" or "establish a procedure to share information on potential patterns of systemic law enforcement misconduct and trends."

Researchers, like Boehme, believe more data, especially when it comes to policing, is always useful.

"As it relates to use of force, it helps to find out what police are doing right as well as find out what police may need to improve upon," said Boehme. "And it also helps inform police administrators as to these potential holes and positive outcomes of use of force situations."