2010 Q2 NPMSRP National Police Misconduct Statistical Report
By David Packman, on July 18th, 2010
The above map displays the number of law enforcement officers associated with reports of police misconduct in the first half of 2010. (click on the map for a larger image)
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 through the utilization of news media reports to generate statistical and trending information about police misconduct in the United States.
As part of this project, credible reported incidents of misconduct are aggregated into a publicly available news feed and then added into an off-line database where duplicate entries and updates are removed and remaining unique stories are categorized for the statistical information which is presented in this report.
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 any information 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. Therefore, the use of media reports, while not perfect, represents the most efficient method of data gathering available at this time.
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 increase risks of 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 federal government uses to generate crime rate statistics 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 federal government crime statistics and the NPMSRP statistical reports are based on a combination of alleged and confirmed activity, not just convictions.
Full credit and thanks to David Packman.
Do you have permission from David Packman (ie: Packrat) to copy his blog post word-for word on this website? Also, you’re stealing his bandwith because the images are linked to his webserver and not yours.
Astoundingly my state, Arkansas, has close to the lowest rank or rate, whereas Oklahoma, a very close neighboring state, and New Hampshire are among the highest rate. California and Texas rank mid to high because, among other factors, they are the largest populated and sized states.
Clearly, Bob, Packrat is fine with this. He knows the Copblockers, and they cooperate in the same cause. He’s credited as the author, and there’s even an additional hit tap and linkback there at the bottom of the post. In case you don’t know, linkbacks like that are very valuable and beneficial to bloggers.
Why the hostility? No one is “stealing” anything, they’re getting more eyes on the same message, which is the whole point and mission of both sites.
Also, the very concept of “intellectual property” is bullshit, and it isn’t possible to “steal” it, because it isn’t actually property.
In fact, “The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.”
Are we certain this “Bob” character isn’t just a nom-de-keyboard for one L. Neil Smith? They certainly share the same opinion about the bogus notion of IP. *eye roll*
Some of these charts are incredibly disturbing. Like the per capita crime one, average people, versus police. It looks like basically, if I met a cop or a random dude on the street, I am more likely to be killed by a cop than a normal dude, if we take into consideration both murder and excessive force fatalities. And apparently if I run into a random dude or a cop the cop is more likely to sexually assault me. WTF!
Sorry I came into this late, but it’s a Sunday and I have bit of free time.
I just wanted to clarify that, yes, my content is generated under a Creative Commons Attribution license and I encourage people to use my content in it’s entirety or in part as they wish so long as it’s attributed back to it’s source, which is what Cop Block has done.
Of course, even if it wasn’t licensed as such, I still wouldn’t have minded since I support what Cop Block is trying to accomplish.
Thanks guys.