4 ms·
Policing the Police by scraping court data – *An Update
About 8 months ago, I posted this (https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/gr11aw/i_think_i_accidentally_started_a_movement/), the story of how a post I wrote about utilizing county level police data to "police the police."
The idea quickly evolved into a real goal, to make good on the promise of free and open policing data. By freeing policing data from antiquated and difficult to access county data systems, and compiling that data in a rigorous way, we could create a valuable new tool to level the playing field and help provide community oversight of police behavior and activity.
In the 9 months since the first post, something amazing has happened.
The idea turned into something real. The Police Data Accessibility Project (https://PDAP.io).
A core group of highly committed and passionate folks have completed the necessary organizational steps enable us to realistically accomplish the monumental data collection task ahead of us.
Let me tell you a bit about what the team has accomplished in these 9 months.
- Established the community and identified volunteer leaders who were willing and able to assume consistent responsibility.
- Gained a pro-bono law firm to assist us in navigating the legal waters. Arnold + Porter is our pro-bono law firm.
Arnold + Porter helped us to establish as a legal entity and apply for 501c3 status
- We've carefully defined our goals and set a clear roadmap for the future (Slides 7-14 in the deck linked on the site)
So now, I'm asking for help, because scraping, cleaning, and validating 18,000 police departments is no easy task.
The first is to join us and help the team. Those with scraping experience are especially needed.
The second is to either donate, or help us spread the message by sharing this post, liking it, or tweeting about it.
Police data accessibility is possible, and we are going to make it happen.. Thank you all so much
- giantg2 6y agoSo what data is used and what type of infractions are you looking for?
- kristintynski 6y agoAll types of infractions. https://github.com/Police-Data-Accessibility-Project/Police-Data-Accessibility-Project/blob/master/SCRAPERS.md https://github.com/Police-Data-Accessibility-Project/Police-...
- giantg2 6y agoI see the fields you're scraping. How do you use them to police the police? The fields don't seem like there would be much to catch police mistakes and misconduct. So maybe I'm not understanding.
- kristintynski 6y agoThese are the fields we are currently scraping, but we ask devs to please just comment out lines for scraping officer names and badge numbers. This was simply out of caution as we finalize the nonprofit application. The intention is to have datasets of individual officer level behavior, especially around stop/arrest level data and arrestee level demographic data.
- giantg2 6y agoI guess I don't see how this leads to officer discipline or convictions. As long as the officer had probable cause for the citation/arrest, then there is nothing legally wrong with the case, even if there are indications of discriminatory enforcement. Why not create a site that can have complaints against officers cataloged, similar to therobbingroom.com (and increase the popularity/use of this one too). Obviously people still need to file complaints with authorities. The problem is that the authorities don't self-investigate with integrity. I recently had an issue with a trooper knowingly holding a charge without probable cause against my wife which resulted in restrictions in our freedoms. His LT says it's not against the rules. He also backed up the trooper in his choice not to prosecute the other party for a similar offense. Nobody in the system cares. I reached out to a civil rights lawyer and he told me that the courts don't care about rights violations unless substantial monetary damages occurred. If the system won't enforce our rights, then do we even have any? If egregious violations are ignored, then how will trends help?
- giantg2 6y agoWhy downvote without a reply?