The Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio is out with a new report summarizing individual police department policies when it comes to use of force.
The Organization's Center for Social Justice surveyed 42 departments. It got responses back from 30. Executive Director Rickell Howard Smith says they asked questions like:
- How long does it take to investigate?
- Do you have body cams? How are they used?
- Is there a community oversight body?
- Can the information be viewed publicly?
Findings
- When it comes to police transparency and data collection, even though 100% of departments track use of force, only a quarter make it accessible to the public on their websites.
- Just over half of departments use body cameras. The rest say they don’t have funding for them.
- Ninety-seven percent of police recruits receive training on effective de-escalation tactics. But fewer than half of new officers are trained on how to deal with mental health challenges or developmental disabilities.
- All departments receive some form of diversity, implicit or anti-bias training.
- More than three-quarters of responding departments do not have a resident-led committee that reviews their data, use of force incidents, or provides input on policy changes.
“The next step for us is to continue talking to law enforcement departments about all of these recommendations,” says Howard Smith. “We definitely think the data collection and public reporting is super critical to identifying potential issues and working on them together.”
