How Police Agencies Can Avoid a DOJ Investigation

For over 20 years the Department of Justice has had the ability to investigate police agencies for violating constitutional rights. The investigations begin to enforce laws like the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (“Safe Streets Act”), and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VI”). The laws are intended to address systemic issues rather than individual complaints of police agencies. 

The DOJ can file civil lawsuits against local government in order for them to adopt reforms - which is typically done by consent decrees or memorandums of agreement - before anything is taken to trial.

Out of the estimated 18,000 police agencies in the US, about 65 have been under some sort of investigation by the DOJ since the 90’s.

The DOJ investigations included misconduct in numerous areas, but the main three areas were:

• Use of Force
• Stops, Searches and Arrests
• Discriminatory Policing

Areas of focus for reform for each agency included a variety of topics, but majority included:

• Community Oriented Policing
• Stronger and updated Policies (In NOLA, DOJ found that NOPD policies were ‘outdated, inconsistent, and at times, legally inaccurate’)
• Community Oversight
• Mechanisms of accountability
• Tracking and analyzing data to improve police practices

We looked at DOJ investigations of cities on the SpotCrime Crime Data Transparency Ranking which ranks cities on a scale of 0 to 2 depending on how open and available crime data is in that city. 

Twenty agencies on the list have been investigated by the DOJ:

Albuquerque, Austin, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, LAPD, LASD, Miami, NOLA, NYPD, Pittsburgh, Portland(OR), Seattle, Tulsa, and Washington(DC).*

Out of the 20 cities, 18 have a SpotCrime transparency ranking of 2 - meaning they are open and transparent with crime data! Two of the cities, NYPD and Cleveland, are at 1 ranking meaning the data is available, it’s just hard to access i.e. non machine readable, only monthly, no dates listed, etc. 

Compellingly, none of the cities on our SpotCrime Crime Data Transparency Ranking that have been investigated by the DOJ are at a 0 ranking. A 0 ranking means a city does not openly release crime data to the public.

One might conclude that after a Federal Review, police agencies come to terms with transparency and make data openly available to the public. 

The open release of datasets like CAD/RMS, use of force, arrests, officer involved shootings, and complaints give the community an ‘inside’ look of day-to-day events within an agency. This type of transparency introduces a constructive line of communication between the community and police agencies. Problems and red flags can be identified quickly and collaboratively. And quite possibly a DOJ investigation can be avoided altogether. 

Cities like Seattle, DC, LA, and Portland have been releasing these kinds of datasets for years. Albuquerque, Detroit, and New Orleans recently began releasing this data. Baltimore added arrest and calls for service datasets to their open data portal around the time of the Freddie Gray protests. NYPD recently announced the new public version of CompStat (they’re calling it CompStat 2). 

Ask your police agency to be open with crime data. Send them SOCS. Ask them to make the information open and available to anyone to collect, use, and share. Help create a transparent environment that encourages community feedback and collaboration. 

*Note that Oakland and Philadelphia have been under investigation, however, not by the DOJ. In Oakland, a group of about 100 complainants filed suit against the city in regards to police misconduct. In Philadelphia, Chief Charles Ramsey asked for a COPS Office investigation to help reform the department after allegations of excessive force. Interestingly, Chief Ramsey also proactively started a DOJ investigation while serving as Chief of DC Metro police after The Washington Post published a number of stories claiming police misconduct and excessive use of force.