CINCINNATI — Residents of Ohio’s major cities want increased police accountability and reform. But moving from protests to policy reforms requires data collection and analysis of what police do.
In fact, Cincinnati has worked on this data question for 20 years. And Mark Childers, chair of the City’s Citizen Complaint Authority that oversees investigations into police misconduct, said he sees gaps in how the data is used.
“I would like to see us just be able to access all the data. You know, we’re supposed to work as a team with Cincinnati Police Department.”
Police data are there, but making sense of them is the issue.
The 2002 Collaborative Agreement mandated by the US Department of Justice requires the city to report and analyze data on police activity.
Cincinnati’s office of performance and data analytics (OPDA) publishes CPD data to the city’s open portal and anyone can access that data for free.
But that’s not enough, said Iris Roley, founder of Cincinnati Black United Front.
“We need to know arrests around juveniles. We need to know who’s pushing the lever, where these arrests are triggered from. We need to make sure we have all the information on adults that police are arresting in all of the neighborhoods.”
For community activists like Roley, the issue is both in the type of data that is collected and navigating the city’s data portal, Cincy Insights.
The city offers heat maps of CPD activity on its portal.
But downloading and creating different data visualizations requires technical skills many residents don’t have.
Another issue is the time and staff to sift through the numbers.
Gabe Davis, Citizens Complaint Authority director, aspires to put more personnel on data-driven projects to address CPD and community issues.
“The data has shown us, internally, that if we don’t have more resources, more investigators, and, in fact, more administrative specialists to assist us with data collection and analysis, that we’re going to be falling short, and in fact we’re not going to get through our case backlog until 2024 without additional investigators.”
Police data is also often multi-jurisdictional.
This is why Roley has better communication between Cincinnati and Hamilton County on her data wish list.
“Our systems are old. They don’t talk to the county. And they don’t talk to the state. So as we try to build these systems back up, we need to figure out how we’re going to get the information to the communities in a more efficient manner.”
Realizing all the potential of police data is a work in progress, even for cities with decades of experience collecting it.
And while the OPDA did not offer specifics in response to Roley’s concerns, it did tell us:
“The information is published in accordance with standard data governance laws, which protects personal information. Anyone seeking assistance on how to navigate any aspect of the city’s open data portal or Cincy Insights can receive support by calling OPDA at 513-352-5368.”
Office leaders said it also offers periodic public data training forums for the general public.
In the end, the road to using data to improve police service might need everyone to be on the same spreadsheet, literally. e spreadsheet, literally.
