
Police misconduct: Search discipline records for thousands of cops - dsleno
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/04/24/biggest-collection-police-accountability-records-ever-assembled/2299127002/
======
Shivetya
There are two things that must happen before any movement will occur on this
front. Bringing the abuses to even more exposure can help both occur.

1) Reign in qualified immunity for both law enforcement, prosecutors, and
politicians.

2) End the influence of the Police and Sheriff public employee unions over
politicians. People carp constantly about corporate influence don't understand
the level the public sector employee unions have; go look at California's
prison and even education problems for a refresher.

~~~
TheRealPomax
Scope creep - (1) doesn't need to include "prosecutors and policians", those
can come later. In fact, keeping immunity up for those two for the first
decade or two means they're in a much safer position to call out the police
force without having to fear legal reprisal over having (inadvertantly, or
intentionally) collaborated with them.

Dismantle it in stages, because trying to do it all on one go is a recipe for
failure.

~~~
molyss
That's a very interesting take. I feel like they're all very urgent to tackle.

People are losing faith in the political system and I fear they are also
losing faith in the judicial system.

Do you think the people would be OK with more oversight on the lower level of
the executive branch, but none on the legislative or the judicial branches nor
on the top level of the executive branch (the president, in the US of A and in
at least a few other countries) ?

Also, it's worth noting that laws are usually not retroactive, AFAIK, meaning
that if you commit what would be a crime under a new law before that law was
passed, you can't be prosecuted.

~~~
TheRealPomax
When "everything is urgent", you're setting yourself up for failure, because
you won't have the resources to address all issues at the same time. Pick one
battle, and win it. Then reprioritize.

People have already lost faith in both, quite a long time ago in fact. So
start fixing things by solving the problem one step at a time, big enough for
people to notice and gain hope for future development, and small enough that
you can fail without drastically affecting the overall change.

------
flowersjeff
I really have to give it to USA Today, the amount of effort/work to create
this is immense.

My worry is around maintaining and so perhaps there's a 'github'-like
tool/platform that they could use to ensure the data is updated.

Perhaps folks could suggest a scale'able solution that wouldn't break the bank
towards the responsible upkeep this would entail.

~~~
philshem
I agree 100%. Kudos to the team at USA Today for compiling it.

This dataset[1] has been frequently asked about on the open data stack
exchange site[2], with no real authoritative answer until now.

[1] [https://gofile.io/?c=bEbPGv](https://gofile.io/?c=bEbPGv)

[2]
[https://opendata.stackexchange.com/q/4566/1511](https://opendata.stackexchange.com/q/4566/1511)

------
mhuffman
I made a complaint on an officer once and the next day his supervisor (who is
Chief of Police now) called me up and said,

"... are you suuure you want to go through with this? Because if we
investigate and can't prove any wrong-doing, we will charge you with filing a
false complaint!"

Now, I didn't back down and got a letter from them saying, "we investigated
and, although we are not going to tell you the outcome for privacy reasons if
there was anything we would have given the appropriate punishment," or
something along those lines.

I think that a civilian-oversight board (and I am fine with making them have
security clearances) that can look into these once a year to make
recommendations to the City Commission is not too much to ask for considering
this is paid for with tax money and currently has little to no oversight.

~~~
dontbenebby
>I made a complaint on an officer once and the next day his supervisor (who is
Chief of Police now) called me up and said, "... are you suuure you want to go
through with this? Because if we investigate and can't prove any wrong-doing,
we will charge you with filing a false complaint!"

I'd ask him to send me that in writing so I can prep my attorney.

~~~
gruez
Great in theory, but sounds like a good way to be targeted by the police.

------
cheez
This is important. The number of times I've seen people in authority lie to
justify their behavior is too damn high.

------
ZeroCool2u
Is programmatic access available to the database?

EDIT: Actually, if you do a search without providing input, it will apparently
return the entire dataset and a download button will appear at the top right.
Total csv size is 3.8 MB.

------
trimbo
Hmm.

I was hoping for an aggregate view on why cops were dismissed. They didn't
seem to try to index the reasons. This just lets you search for names/towns,
which then links to a spreadsheet that contains the reason someone was
decertified.

So it seems like the main purpose of this would be for avoiding the other
situation they have there: a crook/felon becoming police chief[1]. But I'm
concerned that this is yet another example of how technology is making it
impossible to move on from one's past. Many of them are drug use, or small
crimes, "Unprofessional relationship", etc.

On one hand, it's great this can be researched to avoid a bad hire like above,
but I guess I also feel sorry for Joe or Jane Cop who was dismissed from the
job for using cocaine or shoplifting and now it's easily searchable 25 years
later for everyone in the world[2]. Is avoiding the former situation worth the
latter?

[1] - [https://www.usatoday.com/in-
depth/news/investigations/2019/0...](https://www.usatoday.com/in-
depth/news/investigations/2019/04/24/police-officers-police-chiefs-sheriffs-
misconduct-criminal-records-database/2214279002/)

[2] - Not specific to cops, but this is literally how mug shot websites make
their money. "Pay us to remove your mugshot on our site".

~~~
drb91
> On one hand, it's great this can be researched to avoid a bad hire like
> above, but I guess I also feel sorry for Joe or Jane Cop who was dismissed
> from the job for using cocaine or shoplifting and now it's easily searchable
> 25 years later for everyone in the world[2]. Is avoiding the former
> situation worth the latter?

Yes of course

------
formalsystem
Odd that a website like this isn't maintained by the government itself.

~~~
1024core
Not really odd if you know about the power of the police unions.

------
fergbrain
So now to cross-check who’s now working in another state.

~~~
glitcher
Yes, would love to see much more analysis on this data state by state. Which
states have the lowest rates of police misconduct? And is it an indicator of
better training and accountability, or more corruption with practices that
sweep misconduct under the rug?

------
kccqzy
Not all of these would today still be considered "misconduct" however. Some
officers are decertified because of sodomy.

~~~
14
Sodomy is a fancy term for homosexuality at times. One could be charged with
sodomy for having gay sex when it was illegal. Which wasn’t all that long ago
in Canada

------
spraak
I didn't see mention of why the other 6 states are not available in the data?

~~~
glitcher
Or which 6 don't have data? Would be nice if they were listed with a little
more info, otherwise looks like we need to figure out which 6 are missing from
the select options.

~~~
mh-
California, for one.

~~~
spraak
Hawai'i is another one I noticed

------
sschueller
Instead of the article I get:

"A MESSAGE FROM USA TODAY NETWORK It appears that you’re visiting us from a
location in the European Union. We are directing you to our EU Experience.

This site does not collect personally identifiable information or persistent
identifiers from, deliver a personalized experience to, or otherwise track or
monitor persons reasonably identified as visiting our Site from the European
Union. We do identify EU internet protocol (IP) addresses for the purpose of
determining whether to direct you to USA TODAY NETWORK’s EU Experience.

This site provides news and information of USA TODAY NETWORK. We hope you
enjoy the site. "

I am not in the EU and I am not using an EU ip address.

So I guess you can't find out about police misconduct unless you are
trackable...

~~~
tyingq
I imagine they get a pretty low amount of EU traffic, and so went for the
least effort path to deal with GDPR. And, yeah, IP location databases are
often wrong. Or maybe they just treat "non US IP" as "redirect to sparse GDPR
site".

It is an odd publication. They have some sort of deal with many US hotels
where guests get a paper copy for free. I suspect that represents the
overwhelming share of anyone that reads it. It's commonly thought of as low
quality here.

Archived copy: [https://outline.com/FdzvqY](https://outline.com/FdzvqY)

Their database as a csv:
[https://gofile.io/?c=bEbPGv](https://gofile.io/?c=bEbPGv)

~~~
Sir_Substance
>I imagine they get a pretty low amount of EU traffic, and so went for the
least effort path to deal with GDPR.

But they haven't actually dealt with it. This is a common misunderstanding
among websites that do this.

EU citizens are not required to identify themselves to you preemptively for
GDPR to apply. If I connect to their website via a US VPN and they start
tracking me without asking my consent assuming I'm from the US, that's a
violation of GDPR.

So, in reality, there are two cases here:

1\. They do not operate under EU jurisdiction, and thus might as well not have
bothered making the EU specific page since the EU has no leverage over them
any more than china can force them to take down articles that paint the
chinese government in a negative light.

2\. They do operate under EU jurisdiction, in which case their EU specific
website is not in and of itself enough to handle their GDPR liability.
Regardless on your opinion on VPNs, they must still for example nominate a
specific data protection officer if they fall under EU jurisdiction.

I suspect that at least some of the websites with EU specific experiences know
that the EU experience legally speaking doesn't achieve anything and are
attempting to use them as a protest movement disguised as a self-righteous
compliance effort. A whole bunch of other websites then didn't do their
homework and are blindly hopping on the bandwagon.

The funny thing is the whole thing is backfiring, since a common reaction is
"the EU experience is really nice I wish it was like this for americans as
well".

~~~
tzs
Article 37 says that a DPO is needed if the controller and processor (a) is a
public authority or body (except for courts), (b) their core activities
require regular and systematic monitoring of data subjects on a large scale,
or (c) their core activities include processing on a large scale of special
categories of data from Article 9 or data related to criminal convictions and
offences referred to in Article 10.

It sounds like their EU site would not fall under any of those.

Their US site might, but their US site seems like it would be out of scope for
GDPR according to Article 3, because it is not offering goods or services to
data subjects in the Union.

~~~
Sir_Substance
In fairness, you're probably right about them not requiring a DPO. I thought
that was required for any organization over a certain size, but it seems it's
required for any sized organization that tracks people with a certain amount
of enthusiasm. A court would have to determine if they meet that criteria, I
guess.

However, with response to this:

>but their US site seems like it would be out of scope for GDPR according to
Article 3, because it is not offering goods or services to data subjects in
the Union.

You're referring to Article 3.a. The argument on whether the US site is
offering services to EU citizens if it does not take active steps to forbid
VPNs or place "are you currently in the EU?" gates in place is something only
a court could rule on.

However, more importantly, you're skipping over 3.b.

>the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place
within the Union.

That's unquestionably happening for anyone in the EU that uses a VPN to
connect to their US website. Hence, their GDPR obligation is not discharged if
they are under EU jurisdiction.

The GDPR does not lay out a set of ways to handle EU citizen data. If you
ctrl-f search "citizen" in the GDPR document[1] you'll get no hits. It lays
out the way /companies are expected to handle personal data/. Americans may
not realise this, but they have the right under EU law to file GDPR requests
against EU companies. They may even be able to file them against American
companies, although which companies are or are not in scope gets complex at
that point and I really don't know enough about who is incorporated or has
subsidiaries where to know which companies that would work against if it came
down to lawyers in courtrooms.

The point is, if a company falls under the territorial scope, they have to
extend GDPR rights to /everyone/, because it's not about who you're allowed to
track, it's about how you're allowed to use tracking technologies.

[1] [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&from=EN)

------
Trias11
Is setting up a speed traps and harassing motorists for money instead of
fighting crime is not a misconduct?

~~~
Deestan
"Harassing" people for speeding is one of the things we _have_ the police for.

~~~
jMyles
Traffic laws can easily be enforced mechanically in a far more dispassionate
way than the effect lottery-system-slanted-by-privilege that we have today.

