WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) has reintroduced an act to help gather more complete national data about fatal encounters with police.
Allegations of racial disparities, abuses and uses of excessive force are difficult to identify and unlikely to be fixed without obtaining accurate and comprehensive data, Cohen noted in a press release.
“Before we can truly address the problem of excessive force used by law enforcement we have to understand the nature of the problem, and that begins with accurate data,” he said.
His act
His National Statistics on Deadly Force Transparency Act, reintroduced on Jan. 13, is designed to motivate states to require their local law enforcement agencies to provide data to the Attorney General on:
- The date of each instance when deadly force was used;
- The identifying characteristics of the victim and officer involved, including the race, gender, ethnicity, religion and approximate age of the victim;
- Any alleged criminal behavior by the victim;
- An explanation, if any, by the law enforcement agency of why deadly force was used;
- A copy of any “use of deadly force” guidelines in effect at the time at the law enforcement agency;
- The nature of the deadly force used, including whether it involved a firearm; and
- A description of any non-lethal efforts that were taken before deadly force was used.
This data would be made publicly available, but it would not disclose any personally identifying information.
What’s next
Cohen said he also plans to introduce legislation this year that would require incidents of deadly force used by police to be investigated and, if need be, prosecuted, by an independent actor.
His press release said such cases are rarely prosecuted effectively because of “an obvious conflict of interest between local police and the prosecuting District Attorney, who relies on a close working relationship with those same police officers to carry out other prosecutorial duties.”
Current law
According to Cohen’s press release, the 1994 Crime Bill requires the Attorney General to collect statistics on the use of excessive force, but the law does not provide any enforcement mechanism nor does it adequately define what “excessive force” is.
As a result, the federal government has been unable to gather data from many local police departments, and there are no reliable statistics on how often law enforcement uses deadly force, the press release noted.
