Activists in Chicago launched the Citizens Police Data Project (CPDP) last week, an easy-to-use online database that may be the largest collection of police disciplinary records ever amassed.

The information in the database highlights the Chicago Police Department’s pervasive racial bias and persistent failure to properly address officer misconduct, peeling back layers of legal confidentiality that had previously clouded public knowledge on policing issues in the Windy City.

In an era fraught with nationwide, racially charged tension between urban police departments and the communities they administer to, forward-thinking projects like this shine a path to a more transparent status quo. Every American community should set up a similar database to hold their law enforcers accountable for misdeeds.

There’s a simple logic at work here — if wronged civilians have more background information on those who have power over them, it balances the scales. This would motivate frustrated citizens to work within the system to address grievances, rather than taking to the streets or lashing out at officers.

Unfortunately, New York is among the 23 states that still keep police misconduct records confidentially sealed. Here, officers’ entire personnel files are actually kept secret, according to New York Public Radio. That’s unacceptable, and all the more shameful considering this is one of only three states in the union — Delaware and California being the others — in which all records are sealed in that way. Only 12 states have completely public records.

The extent of the injustices uncovered in Chicago may be the best evidence that communities all over the country need to know how their police forces are being disciplined. The twin issues of cyclical urban blight and distrust of police apply to a host of American cities, not least of all being Syracuse. Many could benefit from clearing out the secrecy and red tape that too frequently surround police wrongdoing.

The most telling revelations brought to light by the CPDP all come across as exactly the type of things people would want to know about the way their local department operates. For example, out of the roughly 30,000 allegations of misconduct filed against CPD officers in the last four years, less than 2 percent resulted in any discipline.

Even then, the sparse discipline handed out hasn’t always matched up with the seriousness of the offense. This was most shockingly illustrated by the fates of the 40 officers in the database accused of sexual assault: only one was fired, seven resigned and two were suspended for mere days.

The statistics presented in the database also reflect a starkly uneven racial bias when it comes to complaints of abuse. While more than 60 percent of the complaints filed against CPD officers came from black Chicagoans, less than 25 percent of overall sustained complaints come from that same demographic. Meanwhile, white Chicagoans –– who filed 21 percent of total complaints –– account for 58 percent of sustained complaints.

Not all patterns revealed in the data are disheartening. The project’s findings support the notion that most cases of police brutality and wrongdoing come from repeat offenders, or “bad eggs.”

Officers with 10 or more complaints in their entire career make up just over 10 percent of the CPD — yet that tenth receives a third of all complaints the department gets. Armed with data tools like the CPDP, activists have the knowledge necessary to pressure departments to clean house.

Sadly, Chicago’s influential police union has been doing its best to restrict the data releases, convincing a judge to withhold thousands of records spanning as far back as 1967.

That’s too bad, because this push for transparency isn’t just to benefit victims of police brutality or threaten officers’ privacy — it’s a chance for law enforcement to regain a level of social trust far too absent in these fractured times.

Thomas Beckley-Forest is a sophomore newspaper and online journalism major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at tjbeckle@syr.edu.

Published on November 17, 2015 at 12:26 am