
The Police Data Accessibility Project - cpascal
https://github.com/Police-Data-Accessibility-Project/Police-Data-Accessibility-Project
======
abellerose
I find these projects potentially dangerous and for people who have been
arrested in a state where the case is dismissed but they cannot expunge
because of the type of charge.

I was falsely arrested under the belief of arson. It happened when I was in my
early 20s. The charges were dismissed and my expensive lawyer said it was the
best deal to end it all. There wasn't even a fire and a cop that made the
arrest had no reason to assume I was trying to start a fire. In any case, I
still have to wait a few years to even expunge it.

Well, when going through university I was bullied & ostracized for a period of
time and eventually found out someone had googled my name. They could see the
arrest on some website and just the type of charge it was.

~~~
thephyber
This sounds similar to the "right to be forgotten" concept in EU law where
citizens can complain to Google to have their records removed from the search
engine, but there is no way to delete all data about the incident.

I don't want to trivialize the pain a wrongful arrest ad bullying caused, but
I think the solution to the underlying problem is more sunlight, not less.
Without being able to see how many wrongful/unfruitful arrests happened at the
hands of your arresting officer and DA, power might go unchecked for longer
and grow more corrupt.

~~~
abellerose
Oh my life was ruined at the time and I had to leave for another university.
So I like to think you're not trivializing it. Happened in the USA and so no
way to have the right to be forgotten. I ended up changing my name.

~~~
thephyber
I'm sorry it happened to you and I'm frequently ashamed of our legal system.
It's obviously not perfect, but sometimes it feel like the people who work in
it don't have the capability to improve it.

------
linsomniac
Someone told me the other day that they had investigated the Minneapolis
police blotter, after the reporting that the majority of people arrested were
from out of state. That investigation turned up that the blotter didn't agree,
and shortly after it was revealed the police issued an apology.

Denver made a similar report, but have not made their arrest records public,
for some reason...

~~~
genghisjahn
Is there a link to this or is the some one that told you, like, totes
trustworthy?

~~~
thephyber
A number of news organizations (local Fox affiliate, CNN, CBS[1]) verified
with the county jail intake database that the first statements of the mayors
were inaccurate. Both mayors retracted when contradictory evidence was
presented by media.

[1] [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minnesota-officials-say-most-
pe...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minnesota-officials-say-most-people-who-
acted-violently-at-protests-are-not-state-residents/)

~~~
genghisjahn
Awesome! Thank you. I think we're all a little skeptical of things that easily
fit the narrative we want to be true(or not). Having a source helps a lot.

------
cpascal
There's a project/movement forming to gather police data and make it
accessible. They are working on scrapers and filing FOIA requests for the
information.

They are calling for volunteers and need technical folks like us.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/DataPolice/wiki/how_to_contribute](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataPolice/wiki/how_to_contribute)

~~~
kristintynski
yup, this is the same group/movement

------
noman-land
There was a similar project posted here just earlier today.

Show HN: Citizen Police Data Project – Police allegation data made accessible
-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23374345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23374345)

------
policeinsight
I work for a company that provides software and hardware for police agencies
across America.

I have been trying to think of ways to help. Some thoughts:

1\. Publicly track the FOIA status of video evidence at a given agency

2\. Verify the authenticity of videos floating around on the internet

3\. Create a way for citizens to verify the identities of officers in an area
who use our technology

4\. Put out a public portal on the capabilities of body cameras by agency:
what exactly they record, how and when officers can disable them, and more

~~~
jacobush
Wow, that's interesting. You are not at all afraid that your customers will
find out and choose another vendor which is not so keen on keeping them
accountable?

Or are you going after mayors (or whatever) more set on reform?

~~~
runawaybottle
It wouldn’t be a concern if these protests lead to a public mandate at the
federal level to require all precincts to adhere to these capabilities by end
of 2021.

In other words, the old way is being deprecated, and you cops need to upgrade
to v2 or game over.

Need some intelligent leadership to pull this off, but it seems we lack this.
We have sincere people that are providing emotional leadership, but I’m seeing
very little in the realm of pragmatic and competent leadership.

No draft bills, or even a consensus list of demands by leading figures with
forward thinking initiatives yet. Not good, we’re on the cusp of letting
another actionable moment blow past us again.

------
bsanr2
I'm pessimistic that any real headway can be made in this area. I suspect that
many local PDs purposefully obfuscate or refrain from tracking data that could
be used against their efforts to maintain their existing culture; and that
even in the cases of reform-minded leaders coming to power, there are
interests both below and orthogonal to, and sometimes even above, them that
are not on the same page[1].

Worst of all, an incomplete attempt to compile statistics that purports to be
a comprehensive overview can be just as destructive as doing nothing at all.
One notes how often white supremacists, racist, Neo-Nazis, and internet trolls
bring up FBI arrest statistics, which rely on local LEO reporting and
certainly, at the very least, reflect the known role implicit bias based on
race plays in arrest rates.

[1][https://theintercept.com/2020/05/29/george-floyd-
minneapolis...](https://theintercept.com/2020/05/29/george-floyd-minneapolis-
police-reform/) Semi-related: [https://www.propublica.org/article/why-america-
fails-at-gath...](https://www.propublica.org/article/why-america-fails-at-
gathering-hate-crime-statistics)

------
runawaybottle
I like the spirit of this. I felt like software tech didn’t have too much of a
place during the Pandemic to have an outsized impact, but here we totally do.
Let’s get this data, let’s make tools to explore it, correlate it, and
broadcast it.

------
primitivesuave
I submitted a FOIA request last year for all parking citations issued in San
Francisco. The data was truly extraordinary and showed clearly how simple
street sweeping citations could lead to a car being towed, auctioned, and the
owner (whose name/license plate is publicly listed if they overpaid or paid a
citation twice [1]) losing their business and eventually moving elsewhere. I
decided against publishing my research out of fear of encroaching on the
privacy of those involved.

One story that comes to mind is the license plate HPPYPPS, a plumber whose
company Happy Pipes provided service around SF. He was subject to numerous
citations on the order of $1k a month. When his van was towed, he likely did
not have the funds to retrieve it, and it was subsequently auctioned. He now
does business under the same name, but in Utah. It is interesting to think of
how much tax revenue the city actually lost by fining a small business out of
existence, which was likely much greater than the total punitive fines levied
against him.

In the process of looking up companies that owned vehicles, S1 filings, and
high-end cars that seem to accrue tens of thousands of dollars of fines every
year, I grew exhausted and demoralized by the project and it has sat on my
back burner for a year now. If anyone is interested in taking this up while
respecting the privacy of those involved, let me know how to contact you and
I'll share my data.

1\. [https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-
docume...](https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-
documents/2017/11/escheatment_posting_oct_2017.pdf)

~~~
nradov
The unfortunate reality is that parking tickets are just a cost of doing
business in any dense city. When you have appointments to keep you simply
can't circle the block until a parking space opens up. But that means
businesses have to charge customers enough to cover the ticket cost, and then
actually pay the tickets rather than letting them accumulate.

~~~
primitivesuave
As someone who has probably lost a day of each year roaming San Francisco
looking for parking, I wholeheartedly agree with you that punitive measures
are the only way to keep people from occupying limited parking spaces beyond
certain limits. However, my qualm is with arbitrary citations like street
sweeping, missing front license plates (some cars only have one on the back),
and numerous other petty citations that the average tech worker has no problem
paying off, while leaving the hospitality worker or small business owner in a
state of bankruptcy after a single unlucky sequence of events.

~~~
jacobush
Just another way the poor pay a higher "tax" percentage wise compared to more
affluent.

------
chrisco255
I'm not sure the goal of this project but collecting criminal arrest
information and making it public is not going to help anyone who's been
wrongfully arrested, or anyone who's had their charge expunged. I'm fairly
sure that storing and exposing this data improperly without respect to
subsequent court actions is in violation of the law.

~~~
thephyber
> is in violation of the law

It's not clear to me that this is true for all data about an arrest/charge.

Courts have upheld that arrest mugshots and fingerprints taken at jail intake
time both can be retained by the law enforcement system even if the arrested
person is exonerated (acquitted, charged dropped, etc).

~~~
chrisco255
Each jurisdiction differs on this dramatically. But the law enforcement system
is quite different from some random GitHub repo.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I unaware of any legal authority one could use to remove public information
from GitHub, even after expungement of the public record itself. These are not
works covered under copyright that a DMCA takedown notice would apply to.

You’re still correct that datasets such as these might need to be globally
distributed, instead of hosted with a single commercial provider.

~~~
chrisco255
Criminal records are owned by the jurisdiction which served the case. These
are governed by state and federal laws. You are also subject to severe
defamation lawsuits and anyone contributing to this repo can be held
personally culpable. This is not about copyright.

EDIT I'm not going to do your legal homework for you, but this is South
Carolina, for example. As stated above, each of the 50 United States has
various laws and regulations with regards to arrest and criminal records.
Violate those laws at your own risk, but if a lawyer is not being involved in
this project on an ongoing basis, I highly recommend anyone to avoid:
[https://www.scjustice.org/criminal-records-come-back-
haunt-e...](https://www.scjustice.org/criminal-records-come-back-haunt-
expungements-third-party-background-reports/)

That's just about respecting expungement (30 day notice must takedown). If you
improperly record or transcode the data from the scrape and that results in
someone being attributed to something that the record never showed, you are
subject to full weight of defamation lawsuits. If you unwittingly expose
someone's private information that is involved in witness protection, for
example, you can be subject to legal and civil penalties:
[https://www.gsa.gov/reference/gsa-privacy-program/rules-
and-...](https://www.gsa.gov/reference/gsa-privacy-program/rules-and-policies-
protecting-pii-privacy-act)

------
hirundo
Expect Github/Microsoft to crumble at the first, inevitable, court order to
censor this material. This is derogatory data about members of among the most
politically and legally powerful groups in the country. It's great to post
this data there, but hopefully as only one node in a well distributed network
of many clones.

------
chaps
Okay, so some PROBABLY BAD THINGS about this project. I'm 100% convinced that
this group is an astroturfing project, but I don't know to what end.

1\. This group believes that police officer names should be redacted from all
police documents. They also think that Court case IDs should be redacted
because it might be PII.

2\. The owner of the group is accepting police officers into their ranks, and
suggestions of inviting FBI agents and police commanders have been taken
seriously. When I tried to point out that this was a bad idea, I was told I
was "gaslighting" the group.

3\. They have no legal representation. The closest they have (as of yesterday)
is a legal researcher. This researcher is very green.

4\. The creator of the group is a marketing expert who is a co-owner of a
marketing company named frac.tl that specializes in making things go viral
using emotional issues. While that in itself _might not_ be a bad thing, it
should make trusting this movement a bit more difficult.

5\. The blog post that 'started' this had three different author names, and
was recently changed two weeks ago. The 'current author' has told me that this
is because the website editor was changed twice. Again, not something bad in
itself, but combine it with everything..

6\. The blog post that started this all is on lawsuit.org, which is owned by
frac.tl. Instead of representing themselves as owners of frac.tl, the creators
of this group represent themselves as lawsuit.org.

7\. The owner of the group has given admin permissions to the group to people
that she's never met. They have full rights to do whatever they want,
including kick/ban/view email addresses.

FWIW, in the past 6mo, I've been heavily involved in police accountability
work. Still new to it, but the folks that I've talked to who do this work more
than I agree that this is a suspicious group.

If you want to support projects like this, _please_ donate to your local
police accountability groups instead!

Will post links in a bit.

~~~
dogman144
Copy and pasting from a related reply within the group:

``` 1) There's been no decision on redactions. We're still standing up proj
mgmt tools after 1000 members in 4 days, much less "this will be in it, this
will be in it"

2) Someone else, not the owner, was largely advocating for police inclusion
b/c of the impact of the data. Again, no decision made here about "no cops/yes
cops"

3) Law professor is the legal lead, with about a team of 5+ researchers (mix
of law students, etc.)

4) True. Marketing = bad, is that the point?

5) True. The author explained it to the T, there wasn't much there there.

6) Creator of the group is with frac.tl, the rest of the 'leadership team' has
zero to do with it.

7) So what's the deal.... too centralized around the creator's professional
group, or too dispersed management to people away from people that aren't in
her group. ```

~~~
chaps
1: _Your scraper must be anonymizing data that it gathers, removing
identifiable information to prevent disclosure of names of arresting officers
or cited citizens._ [https://github.com/Police-Data-Accessibility-
Project/Police-...](https://github.com/Police-Data-Accessibility-
Project/Police-Data-Accessibility-Project/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)

5: It's still an SEO tactic that should raise flags. Here are the names of the
past posters if anyone wants to dig:

Matt Meadows:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20191118214540/https://lawsuit.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191118214540/https://lawsuit.org/keeping-
cops-accountable/)

Kristen:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200527213804/https://lawsuit.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200527213804/https://lawsuit.org/keeping-
cops-accountable/)

Ryan:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200518181855/https://lawsuit.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200518181855/https://lawsuit.org/keeping-
cops-accountable/)

~~~
dogman144
That was built by a volunteer within the Slack on ~Day 2 as to give devs a
target to start coding towards. It was paired with many public
calls/disclaimers that no official words on the mission or final product would
come before the next week once (1) was complete and input from the group was
heard.

------
gavin_gee
I wonder if [https://usafacts.org/](https://usafacts.org/) could get involved
with this project?

