The Department of Police Accountability announced on Wednesday that it is launching a review into the police department’s data collection, in response to reports that officers may be deliberately misreporting race data in traffic stops and revelations that the police department inadequately audits this data.
The department’s head, Paul Henderson, first suggested last month that the one officer accused of misconduct for inaccurately reporting race data may not be alone, and that the issue could be more widespread.
During a Police Commission meeting on Wednesday, Henderson called for an independent review into the department’s traffic stop data.
“We are a small department, and we have limited staff. We are working diligently on the individual cases that we have, but we have real concerns,” Henderson said about the potential scope or pattern of data falsification within the police department.
He noted that inaccurate race data reporting was a problem in other jurisdictions, too, but that further investigation was needed to determine its extent in San Francisco. Officers are required to report data like the race, gender and the age of those they stop or detain, sending this data to the California Racial and Identity Profiling advisory board.
“I’m not saying that we have those exact same problems in San Francisco,” Henderson said, “but we have the same indications of those problems here in San Francisco.”
Henderson said the review could require support from an outside agency and additional access to the police department’s data. Although stop data is supposed to be made public under state law, Henderson expressed concern about the police department handing that information to the oversight agency.
He asked for the commission’s support in that process, and some commissioners, as well as Police Chief Bill Scott, agreed.
The police department, under its own policies, is required to audit its own data collection, but once the commission began to probe into that process, it became clear that auditing is practically nonexistent. Last month, the department’s Strategic Management Bureau head, Catherine McGuire, explained that the only form of auditing the department uses to check traffic stop data is to flag instances in which an officer begins a new entry, but leaves it incomplete.
McGuire called this a “little-A” audit.
“It’s not in compliance with any of the audit steps that were committed to,” Henderson said on Wednesday, referring to the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2016 reform recommendations to the police department, which suggests regular auditing — and the SFPD’s own order calling for them.
Later in the evening, consultant Debra Kirby, who oversees the SFPD’s progress on those reforms on behalf of the California Department of Justice, suggested that the lapse in auditing is a problem across the state.
“Stop data, for how many years, hasn’t been basically audited by most agencies who are engaged in it,” said Kirby, who called it “shocking,” as she came from Chicago, where auditing was prioritized. “It continues to be a challenge. It’s not one that I see a near-term solution to.”
“The police department, under its own policies, is required to audit its own data collection, but once the commission began to probe into that process, it became clear that auditing is practically nonexistent.”
This is where the SFPOA is a RICO operation, law enforcement willfully violating the law. I am sure that the SFPOA and alt right crypto fascists will celebrate the SFPD and blame the Police Commission, progressives, Dean Preston–everyone but the racketeering influenced corrupt organization that is the SFPOA.
Most of us care more about crime.
That should include criminal behavior by the SFPD.