Concealed Carry Permit Holder Says Cops Beat Him Up

June 26, 2012 @ 1:07 PM by Tim Lynch

Story here.

Rodney King, George Holliday, and Police Misconduct

June 17, 2012 @ 10:39 PM by Tim Lynch

Rodney King died today. For the younger readers, some quick background: In March 1991, several Los Angeles police officers beat and tasered King when he would not obey their verbal commands to lay down, put his hands behind his back, etc. (more details here). The police response was excessive, brutal, illegal, and ugly. King received much of the attention, but we ought to remember the role played by the lesser known George Holliday, the white bystander who was appalled by what he was witnessing and had the presence of mind to videotape the event. It turned out to be powerful evidence and a pivotal moment in the history of police misconduct in the United States. Replayed over and over again on network television, the scales suddenly fell (or started to) from the eyes of middle-class America. Without Holliday’s video, the event would have been buried in the LAPD files–’the subject in question, R. King, resisted arrest and was eventually subdued by officers on the scene.’ With the video, a very different story. King received several million dollars and the officers involved were held accountable for their actions–prosecuted for crimes. That was just the start of the fallout. There were riots and then a blue ribbon commission to study problems in the police department. The long time police chief, Daryl Gates, eventually lost his job.

Capturing police misconduct on tape is happening with greater frequency–thanks to smart phones–and that is making the problem harder to ignore.

For additional background, go here, here, here, and here.

Because Everything Else in the IL Budget is Absolutely Vital

June 10, 2012 @ 10:15 AM by Tim Lynch

From Frontline:

In a scandal that’s unraveled over decades, a longtime Chicago police commander and some of his subordinates allegedly tortured more than 100 people, all of them black and some of them teenagers into confessing to murders and other crimes in the 1970s and 1980s.
Now, after pursuing only a fraction of the cases, the commission set up to investigate the abuse victims’ complaints is set to close later this month due to budget cuts.
The Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission was established in 2009 after reports emerged that Jon Burge, a Chicago police commander, and some of his subordinates had beaten, suffocated and in a few cases, submitted suspects to electrical shocks to force confessions.
David Thomas, the inquiry’s executive director, said Wednesday that he’d been given 48 hours notice of the loss of funding. The budget for the first year was $150,000, but it was set to rise to $235,000 this year. “I’ve heard it was a question of priorities and allocation of money,” he said.

The budget for the state will be about $24 billion next year.

Fort Lauderdale ‘Raiders’ Arrested

June 1, 2012 @ 12:47 PM by Tim Lynch

From Local10.com:

Three Fort Lauderdale police officers bonded out of jail Thursday night after they were arrested on charges of falsifying a police report and sworn testimony in connection with an officer-involved crash.
The Fort Lauderdale Police Department said that Sgt. Michael Florenco, Detective Matthew Moceri and Officer Geoffrey Shaffer surrendered Thursday at the Broward County Main Jail.
Their arrests stem from an investigation initiated after Kenneth Post filed a complaint following his Nov. 22, 2009, arrest.
According to the arrest warrants, the three officers responded to a report of the thefts of some liquor bottles that morning at the Hilton Hotel on Southeast 17th Street and saw Post, a suspect, trying to flee the scene. The officers followed him, and at some point, Post’s vehicle and an unmarked police vehicle driven by Florenco collided, police said.
Surveillance video shows Post stealing several liquor bottles from the hotel bar and three Fort Lauderdale officers arresting him.
Investigators said Moceri and Shaffer were also in the vehicle and helped Florenco arrest Post, who was charged with attempted homicide on a law enforcement officer, burglary, aggravated fleeing and eluding, resisting arrest with violence, aggravated assault and felony vandalism.
“The police say that he basically turned his car to intentionally try to kill them,” Local 10′s Bob Norman said to said Assistant Public Defender Kelly Murdock.
“And since Day 1, Kenneth has denied that that has ever happened. That’s something that the police said once he was beaten so bad. He was in the hospital. He suffered a broken nose because of this,” Murdock said. “They had beat him up and … they lied to cover themselves.”
The Public Corruption Task Force alleged in its investigation that physical evidence and at least one witness’ statement contradicted the officers’ reports, probable cause affidavits and sworn testimony. Crime scene photos did not show any damage to the front of Post’s white Cadillac nor to the side of the officer’s unmarked police car. Witnesses told investigators that what they saw was not what the officers said happened.
“This went from someone with an allegation of stealing liquor bottles to, ‘He’s out trying to kill police officers.’ And that never happened,” Murdock said.
All three officers face four counts of official misconduct and one count of conspiracy to commit official misconduct, both felonies, and four misdemeanor counts of falsifying records. Florenco and Moceri also face one charge of perjury in an official proceeding.

Widespread Police Brutality in Vietnam?

October 4, 2010 @ 12:08 AM by David Packman

Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently issued a report outlining concerns regarding how the Vietnamese government handles the issue of excessive force by police, specifically surrounding the issue of deaths in custody. The report received widespread attention in the media around the world and certainly sounds alarming. However, how do the claims of what was happening in Vietnam compare to the information we’ve been tracking here in the United States through our National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project (NPMSRP)?

Well, the HRW asserts that they have tracked 19 reported incidents of reported excessive force in Vietnam within the last 12 months (September 2009 – September 2010) that were associated with 15 fatalities.

Based on our 2010 Semi-Annual Statistical Report, the NPMSRP has tracked 439 credible reports of excessive force within the first 6 months of 2010 (January 2010 – June 2010) in the United States that were associated with 60 fatalities.

How does this break down?

People familiar with the NPMSRP should know already that we base our statistical data on the number of sworn/certified law enforcement personnel within any data set. So, when we publish a “Police Misconduct Rate” statistic that number is representative of the number of law enforcement officers involved in police misconduct incidents, not the ratio of people victimized by police misconduct.

However, since we do not have data on the number of law enforcement officers (or the Vietnamese equivalent) in Vietnam we have to switch to a general population per capita comparison to determine how HRW’s representation of the problem in Vietnam compares to what we’ve tracked in the US with the NPMSRP.

When we do that, this is what we find:

	Vietnam	United States
General Population	89,571,130	309,162,581
Excessive Force Reports	19 (12mo)	439 (6mo)
Excessive Force Fatalities	15 (12mo)	60 (6mo)
Excessive Force Per 100k pop	0.02	*0.14
Excessive Force Fatalities Per 100k pop	0.02	*0.04

*US rates are projected out to 12 months based on data from January 2010 – June 2010

By using a projected rate for our US data and the reported rate via HRW for Vietnam it appears as though US excessive force rates are 7x higher than Vietnam’s and the excessive force fatality rate in the US is twice as high as the corresponding rate in Vietnam.

An important note must be made at this point about the NPMSRP data in that we only track credible reports, not all reports. Also, the fatalities listed are only those associated with credible reports of excessive force, not all use of force incidents.

Another complaint made in the HRW Vietnam report is that the Vietnamese government is not aggressive enough on the issue of excessive force and deaths in custody associated with excessive force. Furthermore, the HRW report complains that many cases go uninvestigated or, when investigated, rarely result in charges or any actual serious disciplinary response.

However, this doesn’t seem unique to Vietnam either. Within the 6 month period cited in the NPMSRP data, 98 law enforcement officers were associated with the 60 reported deaths in custody in the US involving reports of excessive force… and of those 98 law enforcement officers, 5 were criminally charged and, of those, 2 received sentences, one for 15 years and the other for 2 years of prison. One officer was suspended for 30 days and one resigned in the midst of an investigation. So, of those 98, only 8 faced any personal consequences related to an in-custody death. In fact, of the 60 reported in-custody deaths related to excessive force in the US during that same period, 1 case resulted in a civil judgment against the involved agency and only a dozen resulted in a civil settlements made to the surviving families of the victims.

So, it would appear as though the issue of excessive force, in-custody deaths associated with excessive force, and an apparent inability or unwillingness of governments to effectively deal with those issues isn’t just a Vietnamese problem, they are problems all over the world, even in the US.

Now, highlighting how US rates compare with those in Vietnam in no way should make us more or less concerned about the problem in either nation. Nor should this comparison be considered as a slight against Human Rights Watch and the important work that organization does. However, it should be noteworthy that while teams of people as part of a well-funded organization are devoted to studying the issue of police misconduct in other nations, the issue receives comparatively little organized research within the US. After all, the NPMSRP is an incredibly small project in comparison to Human Rights Watch.

The most likely reason for this disparity is likely that most of the world doesn’t think of the US when they think of police brutality or governments turning a blind eye towards abuses by governmental agencies. This kind of comparison, though, shows that it’s equally as important to devote resources to examining this issue in the US as it is to examine it globally.

If anything, the fact that police misconduct research is largely ignored in the US should seem just as problematic as the statistical differences in police misconduct rates between the US and other nations. Especially when the US is often held up as the example of transparent democracy in action for the world.

Is There a Police Brutality Problem in Denver?

September 6, 2010 @ 3:41 AM by David Packman

Image of a t-shirt that was sold by the Denver police union as a way to thank their member officers for what they did during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in a way that mocked allegations of excessive force during that event.

Denver Colorado has certainly been in the spotlight after a string of reports involving cases of excessive force came out in August. First there was the DeHerrera and Johnson case that was caught on a police “HALO” camera which oddly zoomed out just as the alleged beating occurred, which was followed by another videotaped instance of alleged brutality involving Mark Ashford who was walking his dog when officers appeared to attack him for taking pictures with his cell phone. This was then followed by the quiet settlement of an excessive force case involving James Watkins who accused police of beating him for saying “cops suck” in response to their flirting with a woman he was with.

All of this appeared to culminate with the resignation of Denver Manger of Safety Ron Perea due to public outcry over the apparent lax disciplinary response to these incidents including a 3-day unpaid vacation for the three officers involved in the DeHerrera/Johnson beating despite recommendations from the Office of the Independent Monitor that the officers be fired, not just for the use of excessive force, but for outright lying on their reports about the incident.

However, now the city council is trying to head off more criticism by promising to look into whether officers need more training based on how much the city has been paying out in police misconduct related legal battles, which is currently alleged to be just under $1,500,000 since 2008. Despite all these problems coming to the fore within just one month, Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman insists that there isn’t a problem within the Denver Police Department, in fact he insists that Denver police officers are better behaved than most cities based on an interesting “use of force per arrest” statistic he claims is lower than most cities.

Now, if you don’t remember, Police Chief Whitman’s spokesman used a similar “statistic” back in 2009 when the department was facing flack over another series of five excessive force lawsuits that were filed within a short span of one another. That time they claimed that the department didn’t have a problem because, out of 488,192 citizen contacts, only 149 resulted in complaints of excessive force and, of those, none were sustained.

Of course, this is the same as offering up that a murderer shouldn’t be convicted over that one time he killed someone because he had thousands of contacts with other people that ended great. However, there was another problem with that claim in that, according the the Denver Office of the Independent Monitor’s 2008 report, there were roughly 222 excessive force complaints filed against 154 officers within 2008, something that we called out back in July of 2009.

Since that statistic is suspect, let’s look at what the NPMSRP statistics show us about the recent disclosures in Denver and see if there might be a problem despite the police chief’s assurance that the Denver police are not out of control.

In our 2010 Semi-Annual Statistical Report Denver was the sixth worst city as ranked by Police Misconduct Rate for cities that had police departments with more than 1,000 sworn law enforcement officers out of about 63 such agencies that we tracked.

	City	State	Officers Involved	PMR
1	Atlanta	GA	53	6547.25
2	New Orleans	LA	36	4972.38
3	Fort Worth	TX	23	3095.56
4	Louisville Metro	KY	17	2816.90
5	Jacksonville	FL	21	2480.80
6	Denver	CO	19	2465.93
7	Newark	NJ	16	2429.76
8	Nashville	TN	14	2276.42
9	Detroit	MI	33	2176.78
10	Seattle	WA	14	2124.43
11	Orange County	FL	13	2091.71
12	Dallas	TX	33	1945.18
13	Orange County	CA	16	1726.00
14	Prince George’s County	MD	15	1724.14
15	Memphis	TN	18	1715.92
16	Miami	FL	9	1677.54
17	Baltimore	MD	26	1671.49
18	Palm Beach County	FL	10	1598.72
19	Milwaukee	WI	16	1587.30
20	Jefferson Parish	LA	7	1393.03

Beyond this, however, when we compiled our 2010 mid-year we also compiled a subset of our state-by-state Police Misconduct Rate (PMR) comparison which was a state-by-state comparison of excessive force reports and the corresponding per-police capita excessive force rates for each state. Within that subset of statistics we determined that the US average excessive force rate for the first half of 2010 was approximately 210 per 100,000 officers involved in excessive force cases, which is represented by the green vertical line in the following graph.

As you can see, the state of Colorado itself had a slightly above average rate of excessive force, but these numbers are only based on reports gathered between January 2010 and June 2010.

When we dive down and get more granular by comparing the publicized excessive force reports for law enforcement agencies with over 1,000 sworn officers over that same period of time, January through June for 2010, we see something different…

	City/County	State	Officers	EF Rate
1	Denver	CO	17	2206.36
2	Jacksonville	FL	12	1417.60
3	New Orleans	LA	7	966.85
4	Orange County	CA	8	863.00
5	Orange County	FL	5	804.51
6	Milwaukee	WI	8	793.65
7	Newark	NJ	5	759.30
8	Baltimore	MD	11	707.17
9	Prince George’s County	MD	6	689.66
10	Seattle	WA	4	606.98
11	Miami	FL	3	559.18
12	Louisville Metro	KY	3	497.10
13	Nashville	TN	3	487.80
14	Palm Beach County	FL	3	479.62
15	Los Angeles	CA	17	348.97
16	Detroit	MI	5	329.82
17	Memphis	TN	3	285.99
18	Chicago	IL	11	164.68
19	Fort Worth	TX	1	134.59
20	New York	NY	23	128.63

Denver appears to rank worst out of all 63 of those law enforcement agencies for credible excessive force reports with an estimated Excessive Force Rate of 2,206 officers involved in excessive force complaints per every 100,000 officers.

However, when we recalculate that rate based on reports issued up to August of this year, Denver looks even worse with an estimated Excessive Force Rate of 2,531 per 100,000, which is over 10x higher than the national average Excessive Force Rate of 210 per 100,000.

Clearly, Denver has a problem even if the police chief insists that there isn’t a problem, which is likely half of the reason why there is such a large problem in Denver since a problem ignored is a problem that is never fixed. This can be seen when we look at Denver’s 2009 numbers which, while better than the 2010 rate, is still an exceptionally high 1,071 per 100,000.

So, how can Denver lower their excessive force incident rate? The first step, of course, is to acknowledge that there is a problem. Once that’s done it’s clear that the city needs to re-examine how the department deals with allegations of misconduct, namely how earnestly they investigate such complaints and act upon sustained instances of misconduct. Report after report confirm that the problem in Denver is directly tied to an unwillingness to honestly investigate complaints and an unwillingness to effectively discipline officers involved in confirmed and repeated instances of misconduct.

To see what we mean, and to get an idea of what our numbers are based on, here are the reports that were tracked by the NPMSRP for 2009 and 2010 so far:

January 2009 – Denver settled an excessive force lawsuit for $10,000 to a woman who was caught on video when police shoved her to the ground, causing her to break her wrist, then lying about what happened on their report by alleging that she tripped over her own high-heel shoes, which she wasn’t wearing. The officer received no discipline for the use of force or for lying on his report.
Officer: Nicholas Rocco-McKee
Victim: Trudy Trout

April 2009 – The Denver police department was the subject of an excessive force lawsuit filed by John Heaney in April of 2009. Heaney was allegedly beaten by undercover detectives assigned to catch scalpers but, instead, allegedly decided to stop Heaney for allegedly running a stop light on his bicycle (must have been a slow scalping day). Parts of the incident were caught on video showing Heaney being punched and choked before taken to the sidewalk where it appeared as though the detective bounced his face off the concrete, breaking his front teeth. The officer was later found not-guilty of assault by a jury in September 2009 based on defense claims that the loud crack heard as the victim’s head appeared to bounce off the pavement wasn’t his teeth, but the sound of a baseball bat at the nearby stadium. That suit appears to still be winding it’s way through to trial after a settlement conference was vacated in August.
Officers: Michael Cordova, other unnamed officers
Victim: John Heaney

September 2009 – Denver settled a wrongful death lawsuit for $225,000 to the family of a man who died after being repeatedly tasered and beaten with “impact weapons” by police when he was arrested while wearing only boxer shorts. The suit alleges he presented no threat that merited the use of such extensive force that broke 8 of his ribs and split open his tongue before he died.
Officers: Unspecified
Victim: Alberto Romero

December 2009 – Witnesses reported that they watched as multiple Denver police officers repeatedly beat and pistol-whipped a man that they had shot, yelling at him to shut up, until he went silent and died. While the DA justified the shooting itself, there appeared to be no investigation into the allegations of excessive force used after the shooting with the department justifying it out of hand.
Officers: Officers Ford, Garber, Mudloff, and DiManna
Victim: Nicolas Alvarado

May 2010 – Denver settled an excessive force lawsuit to Eric Winfield who suffered 2 black eyes, broken teeth, a broken nose, and permanent nerve damage after two officers mistook him for a bar fight participant in a bar he was never in and repeatedly beat him without provocation. The officer who inflicted the most damage was also a “cage-fighting” enthusiast and the other two officers involved apparently falsified their reports to cover for the incident. The department’s own investigation cleared the officers though charges against Winfield were also dropped.
Officers: Antonio Milow, Thomas Johnston, Glen Martin
Victim: Eric Winfield

June 2010 – 3 Denver police officers were involved in an excessive force incident that left a 16-year-old boy severely injured with a lacerated liver and broken ribs after one of the officers was accused of using a fence as leverage to jump up and down on the boy’s back while he laid prone on the pavement. The officer accused of that was found not guilty of assault in March 2009 even though the other two officers with him testified against him. The city paid out $885,000 in 2008 to settle a civil suit brought over that incident and later fired all three officers for their involvement in June of 2010.
Officers: Charles Porter, Luis Rivera and Cameron Moerman
Victim: Juan Vasquez

June 2010 – Four Denver police officers are the subject of an excessive force lawsuit alleging that officers beat a man while arresting him on suspicion that he was involved in a fight in the Lower Downtown area and then failed to report the use of force or identify themselves when asked. Three of the officers involved are accused of participating in the beating and the fourth is accused of lying about the incident in order to cover it up.
Officers: Michael Morelock, Adam Barrett, Stephen Kenfield, Eric Golladay
Victim: Nick Lynch

June 2010 – A denver police officer is the subject of an investigation that was opened in June of 2010 in association with 21 alleged incidents of excessive force within a span of 2 years including allegations by witnesses who claim he beat a man with a billy club then smashed his his own cruiser window in an attempt to justify the beating.
Officers: Michael Morelock
Victim: Alonzo Barrett

June 2010 – A Denver police officer was accused in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in June of 2010 of beating a man without justification during an arrest for alleged vandalism and then lying when he reported that the suspect hit him so hard he nearly blacked out. The alleged victim suffered head injuries and a collapsed lung from being beaten with a flashlight. One of the officers in question is the subject of an internal investigation into 21 allegations of excessive force involving him over a period of two years which was opened in February of 2010 after the officer was arrested on a DUI charge.
Officers: Michael Morelock and Kimberly Thompson
Victim: Tyler Mustard

June 2010 – Four Denver police officers are the subject of a suit alleging that they followed a 17-year-old boy home after he allegedly witnessed the officers using excessive force on a group of kids and, according to witnesses, kicked his legs out from under him, put him in a chokehold, cuffed him, then beat him for 15-20 minutes with police batons.
Officers: Eric Sellers and 3 other unnamed officers
Victim: John Crespin

August 2010 – Three Denver police officers were investigated and one was suspended for 45 days over an incident in November of 2008 where one of the officers put a volunteer firefighter into a choke hold until he nearly passed out then cuffed him while berating him after he tried to get the officers to take his report about being assaulted by a man who punched him and knocked a pizza out of his hand in the LoDo district. The public safety manager was roundly criticized for not firing the officer for that unnecessary use of force or for lying about it, causing him to begin reconsidering the lax discipline in August of 2010 just before he resigned instead.
Officers: Eric Sellers and two unnamed officers
Victim: Jared Lunn

August 2010 – Two Denver police officers were caught on the department’s own HALO camera system using excessive force on two people in the town’s LoDo district while trying to arrest one of them on suspicion that he used a woman’s restroom at a bar and the other for talking to his father, a deputy, about what was happening to his friend. The officers could be seen on the ground with the one man when one points out the other, telling officers that he was recording and to get him. The camera then shows one officer get up, walk over, then almost immediately takes him to the ground without provocation when the camera mysteriously zoomed out. Still, despite zooming out a succession of rapid repetitive movements indicative of repeated blows could be seen being delivered by an officer who admittedly used a department-issued sap (which are illegal in most states). After the camera zoomed back in the officer is seen dragging the man to a police cruiser where he slams the door on the man’s leg after putting him halfway in. The officers were given a 3 day suspension for filing misleading reports despite a review that indicated the officers used excessive force and outright lied about what happened. This was also after the city settled suit for $17,500 to the man beaten while talking on his cell and $15,500 to his friend. The investigation was reopened after public outcry over the lax discipline.
Officers: Deven Sparks and Randy Murr
Victims: Shawn Johnson and Micheal DeHerrera

August 2010 – Two Denver police officers were the subject of a lawsuit and quiet settlement for $20,000 that was made over an incident where they allegedly beat a man after they overheard him saying “cops suck” when they allegedly began flirting with a woman he was with. The officers were accused of hitting him several times before driving him face-first into the pavement, leaving him with facial injuries. The man’s lawyer claims it settled because there was a witness and videotape involved.
Officers: John Ruddy and Randy Penn
Victim: James Watkins

August 2010 – Two Denver police officers are under investigation over a videotaped incident in March of 2010 where they detained a man who was walking his dog because he told a motorist that the officers pulled over that he would testify on his behalf since he witnessed the driver stop when he was pulled over for failing to stop. However, once the man started to use his cell phone to take pictures when he became nervous police officers took him to the ground and began to punch him while attempting to take his cell phone, all of which was caught on a bystander’s video.
Officers: John Diaz and Jeff Cook
Victim: Mark Ashford

August 2010 – Denver settled an excessive force lawsuit for $22,500 to a man in August of 2010 over an incident that was caught on video in April of 2010 where an officer entered an apartment building after resident over a supposed jaywalking incident and jumped him from behind, leaving him with facial injuries. The officer’s report appeared to be contradicted by the video evidence but it didn’t appear as though the officer faced any disciplinary actions.
Officer: Kenneth Johnson
Victim: Chad Forte

The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project (NPMSRP) is an independent project designed to analyze reports of misconduct in order to produce statistical data about police misconduct and accountability that are not otherwise available.

This effort is solely funded by reader donations and receives no organizational or governmental support whatsoever, which means this project cannot exist and continue to provide statistical-based reporting an analysis of police misconduct issues like this without your continued support.

So please consider donating to this project today, thank you!

Conspiracy Cops – Bad Apples or Bad Barrels?

February 25, 2010 @ 3:06 AM by David Packman

In what is the biggest story of the week so far, New Orleans LA police Lt Michael Lohman has plead guilty to a federal obstruction charge concerning his testimony to federal agents about his role in a cover up of the Sept 4, 2005 post-huricane Katrina officer-involved shooting incident on the Danziger bridge that left 2 dead and 4 seriously injured. Lohman was not there when the shootings took place, but instead had responded afterward to direct an investigation into the incident and he found out pretty quickly that it was a “bad shoot”… in other words, it was an unjustified shooting incident.

The factual basis document signed by Lohman goes into detailing a rather convoluted process by which he conspired not only with the officers involved in the shooting incident, but also the officers that he had assigned to investigate the shooting incident to develop a plausible false story to justify the shooting that included a planting a gun since none were found at the scene of the shooting.

The conspiracy to cover up the unjustified shooting went so far as to involve Lohman not only telling the officers to get their stories straight before being interviewed, but to also sit down with all of them to help them get their falsified stories together… and when that failed, he rewrote the entire report on his own to make it more convincing.

If anyone ever wondered at what extent law enforcement officers might go to concoct a cover up, the Danziger bridge incident now offers us a rare view into that depth, and it’s pretty deep. At each point in the process, from the time he arrived on the Danziger bridge to the point where he finally agreed to cooperate with federal investigators and plead guilty, he knew he was building a lie to hide the murder of two people and attempted murder on several others.

The scope of this conspiracy to obstruct justice involved no only Lohman and the 7 officers involved in the incident, but also the officer that he assigned to investigate it, bringing the total number of officers involved up to at least 9, if not more. While headline-worthy not only for the history of the case, but also for the scope of the subsequent cover-up, this type of conspiracy to obstruct justice is not unique by any stretch… in fact, there have been several other similar cases recently:

On February 16, 2010, Stoughton MA police officer Anthony Bickerton plead guilty to obstructing a federal investigation into corruption within the Stoughton Police Department that involved theft when Bickerton hid evidence at his home for another officer targeted by the probe. Bickerton was the third officer ensnared by this particular probe that had another officer plead guilty in January and a third turn over and cooperate with federal agents. All three had resigned abruptly late last year.

On December 15, 2009, federal authorities indicted the Shenandoah PA police chief and two of his officers for conspiracy to obstruct justice, witness tampering, and evidence tampering in a racially motivated murder case involving several local teens that the officers allegedly helped concoct stories to prevent their prosecution for the crime. Not only this, but the police chief and a fourth officer were indicted for extortion charges in a separate case. On top of this, a lawsuit was filed alleging yet another cover up where officers allegedly beat a detainee to death then hung the man in an effort to make the beating death appear to be a suicide.

On January 21, 2010, the city of Marlow OK fired two officers and continues to investigate the chief of police on allegations that they had lied about a drug bust at trial which forced prosecutors to drop all charges in the case. Furthermore, allegations of rampant corruption within the department includes missing drug evidence, warrantless raids, motorists being robbed by officers, a cover up of an officer-involved fatality, and allegations of child molestation made by 8 minors against one officer still on active duty. The police chief has been on paid leave since late October.

On February 11, 2010, four Manhattan Beach CA police officers where placed on paid leave while investigated on allegations that they attempted to cover up a DUI hit and run accident that involved a fellow officer’s vehicle. The vehicle in question caused a three car pileup and fled the scene before officers arrived. While it was later located, abandoned at a nearby gas station, officers never filed a report once they discovered it was registered to a Manhattan Beach cop.

On February 11, 2010, the town of Dolton IL was ordered to pay $110,000 in damages to a man who had been beaten and threatened with a loaded rifle pointed at his head, then was wrongfully arrested to cover for the incident when officers allegedly planted drugs on him to justify the arrest. While the victim was later cleared of all charges, the police chief was accused of purposefully withholding exculpatory evidence that would have cleared him sooner. After all was said and done, 5 officers and the police chief were implicated in the assault and subsequent attempted cover up.

The list of similar cases tracked by the NPMSRP over the last 10 months goes on even further, including the well-known “Walt Disney the Truth” case in Hollywood Florida to the the recent cover up of a DUI accident involving the police chief of Riverside California… and many more beyond that.

All of these cases share the commonality of conspiracy in which multiple officers work in concert to cover up illicit or improper activity through falsified statements and/or evidence tampering. What make these different is that the cover up involves officers who were not a party to the original incident, but who do engage in criminal acts through the act of conspiracy. It is, at it’s essence, a practical application of the blue wall of silence to the Nth degree. Not only is it that the officers refuse to “rat out” a fellow cop, but that they are willing to take it a step further and become criminals to cover for another officer actively.

The problem, of course, is that these kinds of cases demonstrate one of the most frustrating, and frightening, aspects of police misconduct in that, for every case of conspiracy to obstruct that is ultimately uncovered… how many more were such conspiracies were successful in hiding the truth?

How many victims of police misconduct will never see justice and how many officers will continue to operate in a state of pure impunity because of it?

We cannot ever hope to find out so long as law enforcement agencies are permitted to operate in secret by keeping internal investigations and misconduct records from the public as is the law in a majority of US states. Worse yet, the frequency of such conspiracies can only grow as more and more states continue to join the others in creating exemptions to public records laws which close police disciplinary records from public records requests.

Yes, the latest development in the Danziger bridge case should be lauded as a step towards justice, but for every success in uncovering such conspiracies, we can’t help but wonder at how many more never see the light of day, and how many more will continue to occur in the future in the darkness of governmentally-enforced secrecy.

Ultimately, this is nothing to cheer about until such cases lead to reforms that open up the disciplinary processes in our law enforcement agencies and improves the level of accountability that the public should expect from the same police officers charged to hold the public accountable for their misdeeds. Because, in the end, these kinds of cover-ups are indicative of a problematic system of police accountability that is permissive of such behavior.

It’s not just a problem with few bad apples, but a problem of those apples stewing together inside a bad barrel that the public is rarely allowed to peer inside of.

Paul Schene Trial Ends In Hung Jury, Surprised?

January 22, 2010 @ 3:46 PM by David Packman

Video from a SeaTac holding cell that led to charges being filed against King County Deputy Paul Schene of misdemeanor fourth degree assault on 15-year-old Malika Calhoun.

King County Washington deputy Paul Schene’s trial on misdemeanor assault charges for the videotaped beating of 15-year-old Malika Calhoun has resulted in a hung jury today and the judge has called a mistrial.

Surprised?

I wasn’t, I’m sorry to say… and you wouldn’t be either if you were a long-time reader. I remarked on my worries about this case, and any other case against police officers, from the start based on similar recent trials where, despite compelling testimony and evidence, King County juries refused to convict police officers accused of excessive force.

Of course, you don’t have to look much further than the article I put up earlier today showing how difficult it is to prosecute and convict a police officer for criminal excessive force in general. On-duty assault cases tend to be the most difficult to bring against law enforcement officers because they are so easy to defend by suggesting that, no matter how bad the beating is, it was all a matter of training and was justified by the smallest flinch or perceived threat… including a soft-soled tennis shoe flung off the foot of a petulant child.

While prosecutors say they are asking for a retrial, and some may be encouraged that 11 of the 12 jurors voted to convict Schene. I’m still not very confident that the results will be any better next time, again based on the history of trials against police officers here in Seattle Washington, where there’s now one more case to add to that chain of accountability failures.

The trial date for a retrial has been tentatively set for June 1, 2010.

-Edited 01/22/10 for brevity

NPMSRP 2009 Preliminary Police Misconduct Statistical Report

January 3, 2010 @ 11:58 PM by David Packman

Non-interactive push-pin map of police misconduct incidents recorded by the NPMSRP within the last 8.5 months of 2009

NOTE: To see the reports that were used to generate this map please refer to the 2009 Aggregate Police Misconduct Reports in the database menu bar at top. For more maps and info about our maps, visit here.

INTRODUCTION

The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project (NPMSRP) was started in March of 2009 as a method of recording and analyzing police misconduct in the United States by utilizing news media reports of police misconduct to generate statistical information in an effort to approximate how prevalent police misconduct may be in the United States. The NPMSRP has run in beta form since April 2009 until mid-December and this report is the culmination of this beta-phase NPMSRP effort for the year of 2009 as we head into our release-phase of the NPMSRP for year 2010.

While the use of news reports to generate statistical data may seem strange, keep in mind that police departments do not normally release any detailed information about disciplinary matters, and sometimes they don’t release anything at all. The use of court records by themselves would only garner information about misconduct cases that were successfully prosecuted and would miss confidential settlements and cases of misconduct that were not prosecuted but did result in internal disciplinary action.

It should also be noted that the use of media reports acts as a filter that limits the number of outwardly questionable allegations of misconduct, but that this may also suffer from under-reporting due to laws that limit the amount of information law enforcement agencies report to the press. Therefore, if anything, the resulting statistics we publish should be considered as a low-end estimate of the current rate of police misconduct in the United States and for any locality we cite.

Additionally, In order to allow for accurate comparisons between this project’s statistics and the US DOJ/FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) statistics, it should be noted that this project utilizes the same methodology as the UCR by way of a hierarchical reporting system that only records the most serious allegation when more than one allegation is associated with an singular alleged incident of misconduct. It should also be noted that both the FBI/DOJ UCR and NPMSRP report on alleged instances, not just convictions.

SUMMARY

The following report was generated from data gathered in the months of April 2009 through mid-December 2009. In the those 8.5 months there were:

3,445 – Unique reports of police misconduct tracked by the NPMSRP
4,012 – Law enforcement officers alleged to have engaged in misconduct.
261 – Law enforcement leaders (police chiefs or sheriffs) that were cited in those reports.
4,778 – Alleged victims of police misconduct cited in tracked reports
258 – Fatalities reported in connection with alleged instances of misconduct.
15.05 – Reported incidents of misconduct tracked per day on average or a report of misconduct every 96 minutes.
$198,943,000 – Reported costs in police misconduct related civil litigation, not counting legal fees or court costs.
980.64 per 100,000 – Estimated average 2009 US police misconduct rate (PMR = officers implicated per 100,000 officers)

The following comparisons are made between the NPMSRP 8.5 month statistics projected out to one year and the 2008 US DOJ/FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) statistics and the 2004 Bureau of Justice Statistics Criminal Sentencing Statistics:

1 out of every 266 (376.5 per 100k) police officers were accused of a violent crime. Per the UCR, 1 out of every 220 (454.5 per 100k) citizens were accused of a violent crime in 2008.

1 out of every 1,875 (53.3 per 100k) police officers were accused of homicide. Per the UCR, 1 out of every 18,518 (5.4 per 100k) citizens were accused of homicide in 2008 while 1 out of every 4037 (24.77 per 100k) officers died in the line of duty in 2009.

1 out of every 947 (105.63 per 100k) police officers were accused of sexual assault. Per the UCR, 1 out of every 3,413 (29.3 per 100k) citizens were accused of sexual assault in 2008.

33% of police officers charged in 2009 were ultimately convicted while 68% of citizens charged were ultimately convicted in 2004.

64% of police officers convicted were actually sentenced to spend time in prison in 2009 while 72% of citizens were sentenced to incarceration in 2004.

Law enforcement officers were sentenced to an average of 14 months in prison when sentenced to incarceration in 2009 while citizens were sentenced to an average of 37 months in prison when incarcerated in 2004.

MISCONDUCT BY CATEGORY AND STATUS

When examining misconduct reports by type, non-firearm related excessive force complaints were most common at 18.1% (772) of all reports, followed by sexual misconduct complaints at 11.9% (509), and then fraud/theft reports at 8.9% (382).

When examining reports by last reported status, 45.9% had resulted in some sort of adverse outcome for the officers involved. Of those, 14% (596) were disciplined internally and 31.9% (1,363) were criminally charged. Of those who were criminally charged, 32.5% were convicted for a 10.4% total criminal conviction rate for alleged misconduct incidents.

27% of incidents resulted in a publicized lawsuit, and of those 1,156 civil actions, 34.3% resulted in a settlement or judgment in favor of the alleged victim.

NATIONAL STATISTICAL MAPS

The following statistics only count state, city, and county law enforcement agencies since current federal law enforcement employment rates were not available for calculation. The statistical rates are based on the NPMSRP statistics and employment data provided by the 2008 US DOJ/FBI UCR.

The following density map shows the number of police misconduct incidents in each state as compared to the national average number of incidents per state:

The following density map shows the Police Misconduct Rate (PMR) per 100,000 law enforcement officers for each state as compared to the NPMSRP US national average police misconduct rate for 2009, which is 980.64, and the Mean Average wich is 848.32.

State Statistical Ratings

The following rankings and charts show projected misconduct rates and indexes based on the last 8.5 month’s worth of data gathered by the NPMSRP and then sorts the resulting statistics by state.

Police Misconduct Rates per State
The following chart sorts states by their individual standard Projected Police Misconduct Rate (PPMR). The Projected PMR is calculated by averaging the number of incidents over the 8.5 month period to a monthly average, then multiplying that by 12 to estimate a projected 12 month misconduct total, then calculating the per 100,000 officer miconduct rate over that period of time based on the 2008 UCR statewide sworn law enforcement officer employment rate for that given state.

State	Cases	Projected Misconduct rate per 100k
DC	73	2313.33
WV	62	2303.41
VT	17	2207.91
IN	139	1876.05
NM	50	1713.31
MT	19	1624.68
MS	58	1612.81
MN	100	1591.98
ID	29	1524.24
OR	59	1414.16
CT	72	1177.56
WA	86	1144.85
LA	140	1142.07
AR	49	1140.77
MA	133	1130.50
TN	119	1081.85
OH	166	1072.55
PA	189	1067.81
AZ	97	1061.56
OK	56	1027.41
MD	105	949.07
NH	17	935.31
FL	286	907.83
MI	122	883.08
TX	323	865.69
IA	31	848.32
SC	68	845.89
IL	222	841.42
CO	67	814.85
WY	8	811.36
NE	20	808.80
UT	25	749.98
AL	57	746.83
GA	120	697.48
AK	6	672.27
MO	68	664.96
ME	10	628.85
DE	10	614.88
SD	6	591.52
CA	338	587.03
VA	74	565.99
NC	87	557.00
RI	10	546.56
NV	22	542.23
WI	48	519.75
NY	214	492.62
KY	27	488.12
ND	4	461.36
KS	22	456.01
NJ	104	453.45
HI	5	235.53

Adjusted Police Misconduct Rates per State
The following chart uses the same methodology as the above PPMR chart for projecting the PMR per state but then determines the percentage variance from the average law enforcement per capita for each state and then multiplies that percentage by the PPMR for that state to adjust for high or low law enforcement per capita rates. This is an experimental method being used to help negate the statistical penality states with low populations or low officer per capita rates can face over shorter periods of statistical modeling.

State	Cases	Projected Misconduct rate per 100k	Police per 100k pop	Adjusted Misconduct Rate per 100k
DC	73	2313.33	752.75	7860.56
WV	62	2303.41	209.43	2177.57
LA	140	1142.07	392.36	2022.74
VT	17	2207.91	174.96	1743.76
NM	50	1713.31	207.62	1605.76
IN	139	1876.05	164.03	1389.13
CT	72	1177.56	246.54	1310.51
MA	133	1130.50	255.61	1304.43
MS	58	1612.81	172.77	1257.81
MT	19	1624.68	170.66	1251.58
MN	100	1591.98	169.87	1220.75
TN	119	1081.85	249.87	1220.23
ID	29	1524.24	176.27	1212.82
MD	105	949.07	277.25	1187.77
IL	222	841.42	288.71	1096.58
AR	49	1140.77	212.37	1093.60
OR	59	1414.16	155.41	992.05
FL	286	907.83	240.54	985.72
OK	56	1027.41	211.26	979.80
PA	189	1067.81	200.73	967.57
SC	68	845.89	253.34	967.34
WY	8	811.36	261.33	957.11
AZ	97	1061.56	198.46	950.99
OH	166	1072.55	190.23	921.03
CO	67	814.85	235.01	864.42
TX	323	865.69	216.53	846.14
WA	86	1144.85	161.93	836.83
NH	17	935.31	195.01	823.35
GA	120	697.48	250.77	789.55
AL	57	746.83	231.13	779.19
MI	122	883.08	194.97	777.21
NJ	104	453.45	372.92	763.33
MO	68	664.96	244.21	733.05
DE	10	614.88	262.97	729.91
NE	20	808.80	195.75	714.67
NY	214	492.62	314.66	699.72
IA	31	848.32	171.82	657.96
VA	74	565.99	237.58	607.00
RI	10	546.56	245.82	606.48
NC	87	557.00	239.10	601.18
CA	338	587.03	221.15	586.02
UT	25	749.98	171.98	582.22
AK	6	672.27	183.60	557.15
WI	48	519.75	231.66	543.52
NV	22	542.23	220.29	539.20
KS	22	456.01	243.06	500.34
ME	10	628.85	170.53	484.08
SD	6	591.52	178.07	475.47
KY	27	488.12	182.91	403.03
ND	4	461.36	190.81	397.38
HI	5	235.53	232.65	247.35

AVG	83.12	980.64	221.53	919.25

Police Misconduct Index by State

The NPMSRP Police Misconduct Index (PMI) is a statistical representation of both the Police Misconduct Rate as well as how authorities and the judicial system effectively responds to police misconduct in each state. This chart contains the PMR for each state along with the total disciplinary actions taken (PMDPR), the criminal prosecutions pursued (PMCPR), the convictions per prosecution (PMConR1), and the convictions per misconduct incident (PMConR2), and utilizes those figures to create a Police Misconduct Index (PMI) which may help predict how likely police misconduct is to trend upwards or downwards in the future based on the assumption that a lack of effective response to misconduct may induce more misconduct to occur in the future. The lower the PMI, the less effective the response to police misconduct and, therefore, the more likely it is that police misconduct may increase within that state.

*note: West Virginia state statistics are based on an estimated law enforcement population since they do not provide statistical information to the federal government.

Local Law Enforcement Agency Ratings

All local population and law enforcement agency employment numbers are supplied by the FBI/DOJ UCR program’s 2008 report, which was the most current data available at the time this data was compiled. All statistical information is generated by utilizing the UCR numbers along with current misconduct data gathered through the NPMSRP.

Please note that, since this project utilizes data about law enforcement agencies as supplied by the FBI/DOJ Uniform Crime Reporting program, not all local law enforcement agencies are included in this report. Notably, among the missing agencies are all agencies in West Virginia and any other individual agencies which do not participate in the UCR program.

The average national police misconduct rate is estimated to be 980.64 per 100,000 police officers. In 2008 there were an estimated 712,360 state and local law enforcement officers employed in the US for an average of 1 law enforcement officer for every 234.2 people in the US.

Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 1000+ Officers

The following are the top 25 local law enforcement agencies by police misconduct rates that employ over 1000 law enforcement officers:

	Agency	State	Reported	PMR
1	Palm Beach County	FL	27	3043.17
2	New Orleans	LA	31	3018.65
3	Washington	DC	73	2554.09
4	Baltimore	MD	54	2447.44
5	Dallas	TX	55	2285.59
6	Boston	MA	33	2102.58
7	Fort Worth	TX	21	1992.60
8	St. Louis	MO	19	1906.76
9	Albuquerque	NM	13	1781.34
10	San Jose	CA	17	1733.19
11	Atlanta	GA	19	1654.73
12	Memphis	TN	24	1612.96
13	Denver	CO	17	1555.48
14	Jacksonville	FL	18	1499.11
15	Seattle	WA	14	1497.72
16	San Antonio	TX	19	1243.16
17	DeKalb County	GA	9	1189.32
18	Detroit	MI	25	1162.60
19	El Paso	TX	9	1124.00
20	Orange County	CA	14	1064.72
21	Indianapolis	IN	11	975.47
22	Newark	NJ	9	963.55
23	Philadelphia	PA	46	958.90
24	Cincinnati	OH	7	911.36
25	Chicago	IL	85	897.15

Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 500-999 Officers

The following are the top 20 local law enforcement agencies by police misconduct rates (in projected percentages) that employ 500 to 999 law enforcement officers:

	Agency	State	Reported	PMR
1	Minneapolis	MN	39	6171.72
2	Oakland	CA	24	4417.75
3	Pittsburgh	PA	26	4312.94
4	St. Paul	MN	15	3536.79
5	Toledo	OH	15	3309.86
6	Maricopa County	AZ	16	2941.33
7	Mesa	AZ	15	2545.13
8	Birmingham	AL	13	2323.19
9	Gwinnett County	GA	11	2294.38
10	Portland	OR	16	2281.09
11	Baton Rouge	LA	9	2020.70
12	Collier County	FL	8	1801.92
13	Prince William County	VA	7	1784.81
14	Orlando	FL	9	1714.86
15	Tulsa	OK	10	1713.24
16	St. Petersburg	FL	6	1662.08
17	King County	WA	6	1626.92
18	Yonkers	NY	7	1520.80
19	Fresno	CA	8	1368.93
20	Pima County	AZ	5	1272.56

Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 100-499 Officers

The following are the top 20 local law enforcement agencies by police misconduct rates (in projected percentages) that employ 100 to 499 law enforcement officers:

	Agency	State	Reported	PMR
1	Anderson	IN	10	12051.28
2	Pinal County	AZ	13	8728.57
3	Muncie	IN	6	8294.12
4	Stark	OH	7	7152.17
5	Greenville	SC	9	7129.21
6	Lincoln	NC	5	7050.00
7	Missoula	MT	5	7050.00
8	Flint	MI	10	7014.93
9	Spokane	WA	7	6950.70
10	Waco	TX	11	6572.03
11	Stratford	CT	5	6467.89
12	Peoria	IL	11	6204.00
13	North Richland Hills	TX	5	6184.21
14	Oakland BART	CA	9	6160.19
15	Dallas	TX	18	5615.04
16	Albany	GA	7	5576.27
17	Columbia	MO	6	5529.41
18	Burbank	CA	6	5458.06
19	New Bedford	MA	11	5385.42
20	Washtenaw	MI	5	5261.19

Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 50-99 Officers

The following are the top 20 local law enforcement agencies by police misconduct rates (in projected percentages) that employ 50 to 99 law enforcement officers:

	Agency	State	Reported	PMR
1	Greece Town	NY	12	18800.00
2	Coeur d’Alene	ID	9	18661.76
3	San Luis Obispo	CA	8	18193.55
4	Bozeman	MT	6	16920.00
5	West Memphis	AR	8	15887.32
6	Salisbury	MD	9	15107.14
7	Russellville	AR	5	14100.00
8	Harrison Town	NY	6	11589.04
9	Jefferson County	AR	4	11058.82
10	Stoughton	MA	4	10846.15
11	Warren	OH	6	10317.07
12	East St. Louis	IL	5	10217.39
13	Easton	PA	4	9724.14
14	Volusia County	FL	4	9400.00
15	Jeffersonville	IN	4	9245.90
16	Southaven	MS	6	8812.50
17	McKeesport	PA	3	8294.12
18	New London	CT	5	7833.33
19	Midland County	TX	4	7726.03
20	Melrose Park	IL	4	7520.00

*Please note that cities and counties from West Virginia and individual local agencies that chose not to participate in the FBI/DOJ UCR program are also not included in the NPMSRP localized report because we have no information on the number of officers employed at those agencies.

Terminology

Misconduct Types:

Accountability – Incidents involving evidence of police misconduct cover-ups, lack of investigations, allegations of lax disciplinary response to sustained allegations, and other activities that involve accountability policies or processes.

Animal Cruelty – Acts of violence resulting in harm to animals both on and off duty that may include unnecessary shooting incidents, inappropriate training of K9 units, or other such activities.

Assault – Unwarranted violence occurring while off-duty excluding murder.

Auto – Incidents involving reckless operation, failure to adhere to high-speed chase policy, or other acts of neglegence involving use of law enforcement vehicles excluding cases of impared operation. (see DUI).

Brutality – Unwarranted or excessive physical violence occurring while on-duty excluding cases of firearms or tasers.

Civil Rights – Violations of general civil liberties that would be ruled unconstitutional yet not covered by other categories. For example, excessive force would be a violation of constitutionally protected rights, but is already covered in the Brutality class. However, complaints of warrantless eavesdropping or illegal disruptions of lawful protests would be deemed civil rights violations.

Sexual Misconduct- Sexually-related incidents including rape, sexual assault, sexual battery, misuse of police equipment/data to elicit sex, harassment, coercion, prostitution, sex on duty, incest, and molestation.

Theft/fraud – includes financial crimes such as robbery, theft, shoplifting, fraud, extortion, and bribery

Shooting – gun-related incidents both on and off-duty, including self-harm

Taser – Excessive force where the primary use of force involved an electrical shock device including incidents where usage was not within training or policy parameters that resulted in excessive injury or death. When the taser is also used in conjunction with excessive physical force, this will be recorded as “Brutality”.

Color of Law – incidents that involve misuse of authority such as bribery, use of position for favors, extortion by threat of arrest, or use of badge to avoid arrest.

Perjury – includes false testimony, dishonesty during investigations, falsified charging papers, and falsified warrants.

Raid – Misconduct occuring during warranted or warrantless raids or searches including wrong-address raids, mistaken raids, use of no-knock raids on warrants requiring notification, or mistreatment during execution of a raid.

Misconduct Status/Outcomes:
Allegation – First stage of a misconduct complaint, can be from victim, witnesses, relatives of the victim, and other sources. Simply an allegation of misconduct.

Investigation – Second stage of a misconduct complaint, can be an internal investigation, criminal investigation, external investigation, or a DOJ/FBI civil rights investigation.

Lawsuit – Civil complaints filed in court, generally requires more evidence than a simple allegation, but still within the realm of allegations.

Charged – Criminal complaints filed in court, generally requires more evidence than a simple allegation, but still within the realm of allegations.

Trial – Criminal trials in court, requires enough evidence to establish probable cause, higher threshold than civil litigation or criminal charges, but still allegations.

Judgment – These are rulings that support a civil litigation complaint excepting settlement agreements that are typically, officially, said to not be admissions of guilt. Should be considered a confirmed case of misconduct.

Disciplinary – Results of investigations that confirm misconduct complaints but do not result in termination of employment.

Termination/Firing – Results of investigations that confirm misconduct severe enough to warrant termination of employment.

Conviction – Results of criminal trials that confirm allegations serious enough to warrant criminal charges. These include both rulings and guilty pleas.

Methodology

Information Gathering:
Data is gathered from various media outlets use of manual website searches utilizing multiple search engine platforms performed approximately once an hour from approx 8:00am PST until 2:00am PST. Reports are reviewed as located to determine if they meet any categorization listed above and are sufficient credible while not duplicative of reports already recorded by the NPMSRP. There are no sufficient key terms that work well enough to automate this data gathering tasks and the results must be vetted by human intervention as well to avoid duplicate entries.

Information Storage:
Confirmed stories about police misconduct that have been vetted to ensure that the story is about a case of misconduct or allegation of misconduct are published to a publicly available news feed on Twitter called “The National Police Misconduct NewsFeed”. From there, the stories are also copied to a spreadsheet where they can later be sorted and analyzed.

Data Analysis:
At the first day of the month, data from the previous month is merged into a second database that contains all reports for the given year where they are further vetted to remove any duplicate reports. These resulting reports are then sorted and analyzed. All duplicate stories, stories that are informational, stories involving policy, and legislative issues are purged from the spreadsheet or have associated officer or victim counts removed.

Any items involving a status change about a specific incident are culled so that only the latest status story remains to avoid duplicate data. Only the most serious charge in a series of charges related to a single incident of misconduct are recorded to maintain parity with the national UCR statistical analysis methodology.

Data Presentation:
After all data has been analyzed it is presented on this site by General, Geographical, Type, and Status datasets. Once per month an interactive incident map is made available on the site for all incidents recorded the previous month. A list of incidents recorded is also made publicly available for review as well. Once per quarter a statistical report is produced that contains a review of all data recorded and analyzed for the year to that date with a yearly report issued after the end of year in January of the following year.

Important Notes:
The data collected and presented here should only be used to provide a very basic and general view of the extent of police misconduct within the US. It is, by no means, an accurate gauge that truly represents the exact extent of police misconduct since it relies on the information voluntarily gathered and/or released to the media, not from information gathered first-hand by independent monitors who investigate complaints of misconduct… which is because no such agency exists for any law enforcement agency in the US.

This information has been gathered here because nobody else is gathering it and the national government has not gathered it for several years. Keep in mind that geographical distribution of misconduct reports can be representative of concentrations of corruption or permissive attitudes towards abusive police policies or can be indications of more open information sharing between police agencies and local media along with departmental efforts to reduce misconduct by actively engaging problematic officers. There is no real way to determine which is the case since there is no independent monitoring and investigation into allegations of police misconduct.

In general, monthly reports do not provide as accurate a depiction of the overall extent of police misconduct in the US whereas quarterly and yearly reports are more reliable as a statistical reference, therefore we no longer produce monthly statistical reports.

Contact

Please feel free to contact the NPMSRP via email at news@policemisconduct.net for any questions, comments, or recommendations.

Thank you.

New Orleans	LA	3018.65
Washington	DC	2554.09
Baltimore	MD	2447.44
Dallas	TX	2285.59
Boston	MA	2102.58
Fort Worth	TX	1992.60
St. Louis	MO	1906.76
Albuquerque	NM	1781.34
San Jose	CA	1733.19
Atlanta	GA	1654.73
Memphis	TN	1612.96
Denver	CO	1555.48
Jacksonville	FL	1499.11
Seattle	WA	1497.72
San Antonio	TX	1243.16
Detroit	MI	1162.60
El Paso	TX	1124.00
Indianapolis	IN	975.47
Newark	NJ	963.55
Philadelphia	PA	958.90

2009 NPMSRP Semi-Annual Police Misconduct Statistics Report -UPDATED

November 2, 2009 @ 10:45 PM by David Packman

UPDATE: For more current statistics, including our 2009 Annual Report that contains all data from 2009, please visit our Police Misconduct Statistical Report menu page.

Adding local law enforcement statistics to the Semi-Annual Report seemed so significant that I decided it was worth an updated post.

Introduction

The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project utilizes news media reports of police misconduct to generate statistical information in an effort to approximate how prevalent police misconduct may be in the United States.

As part of this project, reported incidents of misconduct are aggregated into a news feed on Twitter and then added into an off-line database where duplicate entries and updates are removed and remaining unique stories are categorized for statistical information in monthly, quarterly, and yearly reports here on this site. To view data from other months, refer to the Police Misconduct Statistics menu item located on the top menu bar.

It should be noted that the use of media reports acts as a filter that limits the number of outwardly questionable allegations of misconduct but may also suffer from under-reporting due to laws that limit the amount of information law enforcement agencies report to the press. Therefore, if anything, the resulting statistics we publish should be considered as a low-end estimate of the current rate of police misconduct in the United States and for any locality we cite.

Also, In order to allow for accurate comparisons between this project’s statistics and the US DOJ/FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) statistics, it should be noted that this project utilizes the same methodology as the UCR by way of a hierarchical reporting system that only records the most serious allegation when more than one allegation is associated with an alleged incident of misconduct. It should also be noted that both the NPMSRP and UCR report on alleged instances, not convictions.

General Statistics

The following report was generated from data gathered in the months of April 2009 through September 2009. In the those 6 months there were:

2,568 – Alleged victims of reported police misconduct.
2,854 – Law enforcement officers alleged to have engaged in misconduct.
207 – Law enforcement leaders (police chiefs or sheriffs) that were cited in those reports.
215 – Fatalities reported in connection with alleged instances of misconduct.
14.7 – Reported incidents of misconduct tracked per day on average or a report of misconduct every 98 minutes.
1 out of every 116.4 – Estimated number of officers who will be involved in a reported act of misconduct this year.
$128,906,406 – Reported costs in police misconduct related civil litigation, not counting legal fees or court costs.

Categorization

When examining misconduct reports by type, non-firearm related excessive force complaints were most common at 21.3% (652) of all reports, followed by sexual misconduct complaints at 13.0% (397), and then fraud/theft reports at 9.8% (300).

MisconductByType0909

When examining reports by last reported status, 32.8% had resulted in some sort of adverse outcome for the officers involved (25.7%) or their representative employers (7.1%). 215 (7.0%) officers were disciplined, 138 (4.5%) were fired, and of the 1018 who were criminally charged, 317 were convicted of a criminal offense for a 31.1% conviction rate.

MisconductByStatus0909

State Statistics

The following density map shows the police misconduct incident rate per general population.

NPMSRP_Dmap_PC_0909 While the next density map shows the police misconduct rate per law enforcement officer.

NPMSRP_Dmap_PO_0909

The average national police misconduct rate is estimated to be 834.69 per 100,000 police officers. In 2008 there were an estimated 712,360 state and local law enforcement officers employed in the US for an average of 1 officer for every 231.5 people.

The following table shows the state misconduct rates ranked from worst to best.

State	Misconduct rate per 100k officers	State	Incidents per 100k population
VT	2931.94	DC	8.79
WV*	2210.53	WV*	4.63
ID	1861.50	VT	4.51
IN	1816.44	LA	4.49
MT	1695.94	ID	3.28
MS	1654.52	MA	3.14
OR	1629.88	TN	3.02
MN	1578.71	NM	3.02
NM	1456.31	IN	2.98
AK	1428.57	MT	2.89
MA	1228.25	MS	2.86
OH	1226.54	MN	2.68
TN	1210.64	AK	2.62
WA	1188.12	CT	2.57
DC	1167.23	MD	2.56
LA	1144.11	OR	2.53
PA	1136.55	OH	2.33
AZ	1100.78	FL	2.28
CT	1042.63	PA	2.28
OK	1013.65	AZ	2.18
IA	969.18	OK	2.14
FL	948.83	IL	2.14
AR	923.48	SC	2.05
MD	921.95	GA	1.96
MI	902.38	AR	1.96
TX	846.70	WA	1.92
SC	810.64	WY	1.88
GA	782.25	TX	1.83
AL	779.58	DE	1.83
CO	775.33	CO	1.82
IL	740.98	AL	1.80
WY	718.39	MI	1.76
ME	712.69	RI	1.71
RI	696.86	IA	1.67
DE	696.86	NJ	1.61
NE	687.48	NY	1.58
ND	653.59	VA	1.44
VA	606.78	NC	1.43
NC	598.61	NE	1.35
SD	558.66	MO	1.29
UT	552.49	ND	1.25
NH	545.60	ME	1.22
CA	533.92	CA	1.18
MO	526.43	WI	1.17
WI	506.21	KS	1.14
NY	502.21	NH	1.06
KY	486.62	SD	0.99
KS	469.83	UT	0.95
NJ	432.38	NV	0.92
NV	418.99	KY	0.89
HI	333.67	HI	0.78

*note: West Virginia state statistics are based on an estimated law enforcement population since they do not provide statistical information to the federal government.

Local Law Enforcement Agency Ratings

All local population and law enforcement agency employment numbers are supplied by the FBI/DOJ UCR program’s 2008 report, which is the most current data available, and statistical information is generated by utilizing those numbers along with current misconduct data gathered through the NPMSRP.

Please note that, since this project utilizes data about law enforcement agencies as supplied by the FBI/DOJ Uniform Crime Reporting program, not all local law enforcement agencies are included in this report. Notably, among the missing agencies are all agencies in West Virginia and other individual agencies such as Columbus Ohio, which do not participate in the UCR program.

Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 1000+ Officers

The following are the top 20 local law enforcement agencies by police misconduct rates (in projected percentages) that employ over 1000 law enforcement officers:

	Law Enforcement Agency	State	PMR %	Reports
1	Palm Beach County	FL	3.52	22
2	New Orleans	LA	3.18	23
3	Boston	MA	2.80	31
4	Fort Worth	TX	2.56	19
5	Baltimore	MD	2.40	36
6	Denver	CO	1.82	14
7	Albuquerque	NM	1.75	9
8	Dallas	TX	1.71	29
9	DeKalb County PD	GA	1.69	9
10	Atlanta	GA	1.61	13
11	El Paso	TX	1.59	9
12	St. Louis	MO	1.57	11
13	Memphis	TN	1.53	16
14	Seattle	WA	1.52	10
15	Orange County	CA	1.40	13
16	Detroit	MI	1.39	21
17	Prince George’s County PD	MD	1.33	10
18	Jacksonville	FL	1.30	11
19	Cincinnati	OH	1.29	7
20	Washington	DC	1.29	26

Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 500-999 Officers

The following are the top 20 local law enforcement agencies by police misconduct rates (in projected percentages) that employ 500 to 999 law enforcement officers:

	Law Enforcement Agency	State	PMR %	Reports
1	Minneapolis	MN	6.29	28
2	Pittsburgh	PA	6.12	26
3	Oakland	CA	5.74	22
4	St. Paul	MN	4.68	14
5	Maricopa County	AZ	3.39	13
6	Mesa	AZ	3.37	14
7	Birmingham	AL	2.79	11
8	Portland	OR	2.43	12
9	Collier County	FL	2.24	7
10	Pima County	AZ	2.17	6
11	Orlando	FL	2.16	8
12	Gwinnett County PD	GA	2.07	7
13	Toledo	OH	1.88	6
14	Baton Rouge	LA	1.59	5
15	St. Petersburg	FL	1.57	4
16	Polk County	FL	1.55	5
17	Yonkers	NY	1.54	5
18	King County	WA	1.54	4
19	Shelby County	TN	1.52	4
20	Passaic County	NJ	1.51	4

Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 100-499 Officers

The following are the top 20 local law enforcement agencies by police misconduct rates (in projected percentages) that employ 100 to 499 law enforcement officers:

	Law Enforcement Agency	State	PMR %	Reports
1	Anderson	IN	17.09	10
2	Pinal	AZ	10.48	11
3	Stark	OH	10.14	7
4	Lincoln	NC	10.00	5
5	Waco	TX	9.32	11
6	Stratford	CT	9.17	5
7	Peoria	IL	8.80	11
8	North Richland Hills	TX	8.77	5
9	New Bedford	MA	7.64	11
10	Annapolis	MD	7.41	4
11	Youngstown	OH	6.82	6
12	Harrisburg	PA	6.70	6
13	Grand Prairie	TX	6.45	7
14	Murfreesboro	TN	6.33	7
15	Muncie	IN	5.88	3
16	Utica	NY	5.85	5
17	Lafayette	LA	5.69	7
18	Spokane	WA	5.63	4
19	Niagara Falls	NY	5.48	4
20	Spokane	WA	5.41	8

Law Enforcement Agencies Employing 50-99 Officers

The following are the top 20 local law enforcement agencies by police misconduct rates (in projected percentages) that employ 50 to 99 law enforcement officers:

	Law Enforcement Agency	State	PMR %	Reports
1	Greece Town	NY	26.67	12
2	Coeur d’Alene	ID	26.47	9
3	Bozeman	MT	24.00	6
4	Salisbury	MD	21.43	9
5	West Memphis	AR	16.90	6
6	Harrison Town	NY	16.44	6
7	Jefferson	AR	15.69	4
8	Warren	OH	14.63	6
9	Jeffersonville	IN	13.11	4
10	Stoughton	MA	11.54	3
11	Midland	TX	10.96	4
12	Melrose Park	IL	10.67	4
13	Southaven	MS	10.42	5
14	Volusia	FL	10.00	3
15	Jacksonville Beach	FL	9.84	3
16	Millville	NJ	9.64	4
17	Columbus	MS	9.38	3
18	Alton	IL	9.23	3
19	Hutchinson	KS	9.09	3
20	Kennewick	WA	8.89	4

Projected Comparisons

By projecting this month’s NPMSRP totals out to one year, the following comparisons can be made between the reported police misconduct allegation rate and the reported 2008 general crime rate* as published by the FBI and DOJ for 2008 (*please note that both the NPMSRP police misconduct rates and the FBI/DOJ UCR general crime rate statistics are reported incidents, not convictions):

Violent Crime:

(all assault, excessive force, forcible rape, murder, and domestic assault allegations)

1 out of every 268 (372.5 per 100k) police officers will be accused of a violent crime.
1 out of every 220 (454.5 per 100k) citizens will be accused of a violent crime.

Homicide

(all non-negligent manslaughter, murder, and homicide allegations)

1 out of every 2,374 (42.1 per 100k) police officers will be accused of homicide
1 out of every 18,518 (5.4 per 100k) citizens will be accused of homicide

Sexual Assault

(all sexual assault, coercive sexual battery, and rape allegations but not including consensual sexual misconduct, exposure, solicitation, or child pornography)

1 out of every 846 (118.2 per 100k) police officers will be accused of sexual assault.
1 out of every 3,413 (29.3 per 100k) citizens will be accused of sexual assault.

The following comparisons are made between the NPMSRP 6 month statistics projected out to one year and the 2004 US DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics Criminal Sentencing Statistics:

Conviction Rate

68% of civilians charged are ultimately convicted
31% of police officers charged are ultimately convicted

Probation Sentence Rate

28% of convicted citizens are sentenced to probation.
38% of convicted police officers are sentenced to probation

Sentence Length

37 months – average civilian prison sentence length
14 months – average police officer sentence length

Accuracy Check Comparisons

As a form of “parity check” the following table lists law enforcement agencies that are known to publish data on their police misconduct rates along with our estimated police misconduct rates for the same agency in order to make a rough estimate as to how accurate the NPMSRP statistics might be.

City	ST	Agency Sustained Incidents	Agency Rate	NPMSRP Projected Incidents	NPMSRP Projected Rate
New York	NY	151	422.25	104	290.82
San Francisco	CA	39	1631.12	22	920.12
Chicago	IL	383	2866.98	98	733.59
San Diego	CA	7	352.29	10	503.27
San Jose	CA	46	3326.10	12	867.68
Seattle	WA	18	1365.71	20	1525.26
Portland	OR	17	1718.91	24	2426.69
Denver	CO	191	12394.55	28	1817.00

*Note: Due to the relatively few law enforcement agencies that make misconduct information available the number of comparisons we can make are limited, but do show more potential for under-reporting than over-reporting for our data in comparison to what known agencies self-report. (If you would like to see data for your own location, contact us at news@policemisconduct.net)

About This Report

Terminology

Misconduct Types:

Animal Cruelty – Acts of violence resulting in harm to animals both on and off duty that may include unnecessary shooting incidents, inappropriate training of K9 units, or other such activities.

Assault – Unwarranted violence occurring while off-duty

Brutality – Unwarranted or excessive hysical violence occurring while on-duty

Sexual Misconduct- Sex related incidents including rape, sexual assault, harassment, coercion, prostitution, sex on duty, incest, and molestation.

Theft – includes robbery, theft, shoplifting, fraud, extortion, and bribery

Shooting – gun-related incidents both on and off-duty, including self-harm

Color of Law – incidents that involve misuse of authority such as bribery or extortion by threat of arrest

Perjury – includes false testimony, dishonesty during investigations, falsified charging papers, and falsified warrants.

Misconduct Status/Outcomes:
Allegation – First stage of a misconduct complaint, can be from victim, witnesses, relatives of the victim, and other sources. Simply an allegation of misconduct.

Investigation – Second stage of a misconduct complaint, can be an internal investigation, criminal investigation, external investigation, or a DOJ/FBI civil rights investigation.

Lawsuits – Civil complaints filed in court, generally requires more evidence than a simple allegation, but still within the realm of allegations.

Charges – Criminal complaints filed in court, generally requires more evidence than a simple allegation, but still within the realm of allegations.

Trials – Criminal trials in court, requires enough evidence to establish probable cause, higher threshold than civil litigation or criminal charges, but still allegations.

Judgments – These are rulings that support a civil litigation complaint but also include settlement agreements that are typically, officially, said to not be admissions of guilt. Should be considered a confirmed case of misconduct.

Disciplinary – Results of investigations that confirm misconduct complaints but do not result in termination of employment.

Firings – Results of investigations that confirm misconduct severe enough to warrant termination of employment.

Convictions – Results of criminal trials that confirm allegations serious enough to warrant criminal charges. These include both rulings and guilty pleas.

Methodology

Information Gathering:
Data is gathered from various media outlets by manual searches and review of daily news stories several times a day. There are no sufficient key terms that work well enough to automate this data gathering tasks, the results must be vetted by human intervention.

Information Storage:
Confirmed stories about police misconduct that have been vetted to ensure that the story is about a case of misconduct or allegation of misconduct are published to a Twitter-based National Police Misconduct NewsFeed. From there, the stories are copied to a spreadsheet where they can later be sorted and analyzed.

Data Analysis:
At the first day of the month, data from the previous month is sorted and analyzed in the spreadsheet. All duplicate stories, stories that are informational, stories involving policy, and legislative issues are purged from the spreadsheet. Any items involving a status change about a specific incident are culled so that only the latest status story remains to avoid duplicate data. Only the most serious charge in a series of charges related to a single incident of misconduct are recorded to maintain parity with the national UCR statistical analysis methodology.

Data Presentation:
After all data has been analyzed it is presented on this site by General, Geographical, Type, and Status datasets.

In generally, monthly reports do not provide as accurate a depiction of the overall extent of police misconduct in the US as do quarterly and yearly reports as there is a fair amount of fluctuation between incident types and rates month by month. Therefore, monthly reports should only be considered as the state of police misconduct in that month itself while the longer-term reports paint a more comprehensive and accurate picture of police misconduct in the US.

As always, I appreciate any recommendations, advice, requests, and general comments.

Thank you.