America has begun a long-overdue conversation about how police interact with minority communities. This impact of this conversation can be powerful, on a scale not seen since the 1960s. If this movement is to lead to positive change in national policy, it must be grounded in the best data available. Some sources, while well-intentioned, muddy the public dialogue with flawed data. This hurts everyone.
Part of the problem is that accurate, uniform records of deaths at the hands of police have never been kept. The FBI, which tracks criminal statistics nationwide, does not track killings by police in a comprehensive manner.
There are two dominant media databases, both drawn from the independent work of Fatal Encounters, all of which have tried to fill that data vacuum. These data inform the debate and can help develop strategies for reform, but the media projects suffer from significant design shortcomings.
For example, they include Wayne Wheeler of Detroit, who was killed by his neighbor during an altercation after Wheeler had jumped the fence into his neighbor’s yard. The neighbor happened to be an off-duty police officer. This was not a police incident, but a dispute among neighbors that ended tragically.
The Guardian counts deaths after vehicle wrecks, and those in jail and prison, too. On April 22, Jose Herrera was fatally shot by guards at Kern Valley State (California) Prison. Those are not police. Police officers serve on the streets; corrections officers serve in jails and prisons. This might sound like a technicality, but it would be like including Navy submariners when counting deaths of Marines.
I led a team of 15 researchers to create a Police Killings in Context Database, and our results are available in partnership with the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) and Fatal Encounters. StreetCred PKIC data affords community leaders, activists, police administrators, sociologists and journalists a fuller picture of killings than simply listing of every death regardless of circumstances.
No data are perfect, and ours are no exception. Any data are only as good as that shared by law enforcement around the country, which aren’t consistent.
The federal government should standardize reporting and ensure records are available to the public. FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch have called for a national police use-of-force database, but achieving implementation and police buy-in (let alone funding) remains difficult.
To implement effective reforms, we need data that document when police acting in their official capacity kill civilians, not just a body-count of every deadly incident that happens to include a cop. Context is critical.
StreetCred PKIC data show that about three-quarters of the incidents in which police killed an unarmed civilian start with a 911 call in which the caller described the person who was killed. Those deaths split about evenly between whites and black, which does not reflect the overall racial split in the nation. Â The fact is, people who call 911 are more likely to report a racial or ethnic minority.
To create new paradigms of engagement, America needs a robust dialogue that focuses bravely and honestly on issues that lead to violent interactions between young men of color and police. Dialogue must consider all sides. We must not forget the evidence that education, socio-economic diversity, nutrition and neighborhood integration all are important elements in discrimination.
These are big problems that have festered for too long. America can overcome them, but it won’t be easy, and it won’t be successful if we focus on only policing – and flawed data.
Nick Selby is CEO and co-founder of StreetCred Software, Inc. He is also a detective at a police agency in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The StreetCred PKIC data is available at https://github.com/StreetCredSoftware/PKIC.Â
