State website will track police use of force

By: Steve Janoski
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey

..... In a move state officials say will boost transparency in law enforcement and push New Jersey to the forefront of the police reform movement, the state Attorney General's Office on Tuesday [04/06/2021] launched a detailed website that will catalog every sue of force by every police officer in the Garden state.
..... The data, which state officials started collecting in October 2020, will allow members of the public, researchers and the media to review the details of each incident.
..... This includes the officer's name; the age, race and gender of the person against whom forced was used; whether that person sustained injuries and what type; what kind of force the officer used and what circumstances led to the confrontation, according to New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.
..... The website, njoag.gov/force , will continually update as police submit future reports.
..... "We are commuted to making New Jersey a national leader on policing reform, and our Use of Force dashboard is a central piece of that effort," Grewal said, adding that state officials are eager for feedback on the site and its contents.
..... The Online portal will make it far easier for the public to review police use-of-force records, which previously could be obtained only through a public records request.
..... Experts and activists lauded the mover and said it would have an immediate impact.
..... "The creation of this is an incredibly good thing,: said Alexander Shalom, Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey. "It's a real , important step forward for transparency."
..... Jason Williams, a professor of justice studies at Montclair Sate University and a Black Lives Matter activist,s aid it would also help hold police accountable for their actions.
..... "This tremendous," Williams said. "We needed an official source to track police malpractice and use of force."
..... Grewal said the dashboard is the latest in a series of reforms meant to strengthen the republic's trust in New Jersey's 28,000 law enforcement officers.
..... Among these changes was an overhaul of police use-of-force, rules, the creation of a red-flag program meant to identify troubled officers and the revamping of state protocols for the internal disciplinary process within police departments, he said.
..... The attorney general has said he expects the data to help local, county and state law enforcement officials review, retrain and discipline officers who break his new use-of-force rules which formally take s effect on December 31, 2021.
..... those rules bar police from using physical or deadly force against civilians except as a last resort and demand that officers intervene if they see another officer going too far, among other things.
..... "We're going to make sure we get it right through the monitoring," Grewal said in December. [2020]
..... Pat Colligan, head of the New Jersey Policeman's Benevolent Association, said he hopes the catalog paints a more accurate portrait of how police sue force in the Garden State.
..... Previously, there was a great disparity in the ways agencies reported those statistics, he said. Now everyone is following the some rules.
..... But he warned the public to apply context to the statistics they see.
..... "A traffic officer isn't using force like an officer in a narcotics or anti-crime unit," Colligan said. "You just can't look at an officer with 10 users of force versus the rest of an agency with one or two. Put it in context of what the officer does."
.... currently, police must submit detailed information about every sue of force they either perform or witness within 24 hours, the Attorney General's Office said.
..... The state has spent the last two years building the centralized system through which departments would submit the data to the state. Users can sort the data by state, county or individual police department.
..... The raw data on use-of-force records will also be available for download, the attorney general said.

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