August 28, 2020
The topic of police reform is front and center in our world today. Many controversial use-of-force incidents involving the police and minorities have occurred, which has raised questions by community members regarding tactics, bias in policing and if law enforcement is truly serving our communities.
Change is needed in policing, but this change must be guided by sound data and evidence to ensure that reform is meaningful and effective. Recently, RTI International wrote a piece regarding productive steps to police reform through data and evidence (click here to read more). The authors, Kevin Strom, Andre Richards, and Renee Mitchell, explained that efforts to reform policing must be driven by empirical evidence and data specific to the community.
I can't foot-stomp this point enough.
Each police agency must use community-specific data to examine its efforts, hold itself accountable, and provide transparency to the community. Using this data coupled with evidence-based practice and strong measures of programs is key to positive changes in policing.
Data dashboards provide easy ways to help police officials, from the patrol officer to the chief, understand their actions.
Below is a Use of Force dashboard I created using publicly available Seattle Police Department data.
About this Dashboard
Using PowerBi and the Seattle Open Data API, I created a two page, interactive dashboard, which shows high level information about use of force incidents by Seattle Police. This dashboard provides an overview, although, clicking on data points in each visual allows the user to see more granular information.
The upper left corner of page 1 shows the total number of incidents by Month/Year. This is helpful in showing the levels of force used over time. The upper right hand corner includes a date slicer for examining trends between 2014 and 2020. The user can change the date period to get a more detailed look at trends.
Just below the date slicer is a pie chart, which breaks down the percentage of force used in race categories. This is helpful in understanding if bias exists in use of force by the police.
The very bottom graph shows a breakdown of force used within each sector and beat. Areas of the city are broken down into sectors and further by beats within each sector. This visualization shows how use of force incidents are distributed throughout the city.
Page 2 of the dashboard provides a map of each sector and beat used by Seattle PD, and visually shows where the highest rates of force are used within the city. This can help the user understand where the most force is being used, allowing for more detailed examinations and questions.
Clicking on any data point allows the user to get a detailed view of that specific data point. For example, a race category shows Month/Year trends for just that race in graph in the upper left corner as well as within each district and beat below.
The ability to drill down to specific data points is extremely important to understand where problems may exist and enabling changes that can be meaningful. In the context of racial bias within police uses of force, police leaders can first identify which beats have the highest rates of uses of force on minorities. From there, the official can look at how that relates to the community make up, what kinds of force are being used in which instances, and by which officers. This detailed information empowers police departments to tease out where bias may exist, and then implement changes to reduce and end bias.
The above dashboard is just an overview and future blog posts will showcase other dashboards that integrate both calls for service and demographic information to help solve these problems.
Conclusion: In making meaningful reforms and change to policing, this type of data is vital. Police agencies must look at specific areas where change is needed. Blanket "policing is racist" ideology is not helpful - rather, detailed examination is required to determine where bias exists. Through using data to understand the problem, evidence-based practice to address identified issues, and sound measures to track progress, we can create change in policing to better protect and serve our communities.
Want to connect on this topic? Head over to my Contact page and leave me a message.
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