Traffic stops. Discipline. Use of force. Following widespread calls for police accountability, Houston residents now can use the city’s “Police Transparency Hub” to get far more detailed, accessible information about some of police’s most controversial topics than has ever been available previously.
The online tool — compiled in a series of dashboards — provides information about the work and conduct of Houston police officers, including how often they use force, how often they are disciplined, statistics on the department’s diversity, information on traffic stops, and information on the department’s implementation of “cite-and-release,” in which officers issue citations for some misdemeanor offenses instead of arresting people.
Since the start of the year, police officers conducted 88,301 traffic stops, used force 4,203 times, and issued 152 citations instead of arrests.
In a news release that accompanied the launch of the tool earlier this month, Mayor Sylvester Turner said it was “a significant step toward increasing transparency and accountability while building trust between the public and the police department.”
The website also tells residents how to file complaints about police officers and shares information about other controversial policing topics, including the city’s contract with its officers, the police department’s general orders, the city’s new Office of Police Reform and Accountability, and the Independent Police Oversight Board.
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Criminal justice reform advocates called the dashboard a “critical step” toward keeping HPD accountable but said it needs more work.
“Data transparency is a vital tool to assess the efficacy and fairness of policing,” said Julia Montiel, policy and advocacy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “We hope city leaders will collaborate with advocates to further refine the dashboard.”
See here for the background, and here for the city’s press release. The portal looks pretty useful, and the key here is just that the data is publicly available, in easy to view form. That will help answer a lot of questions, and will be a force for accountability just because people will be able to see how the data trends over time. I don’t know what specifically could be done to make this better, but the suggestion that the city work with activists and get their feedback makes a lot of sense. There was a lot of work done under Mayor Parker to make a bunch of city data available in raw form for developers and other folks who might want to make use of it, and I hope that is the case with this data as well. Take a look at what’s there and see what you think.
This is stupid. The cop who killed the Tuttles never was fired. We the people are still paying his pension. Then that Ogg never did get around to do much about it. Turner and Ogg should be impeached, in a just and rational world. It took the federal government to really do anything about that out of control detective.
And, he still hasn’t been convicted. Let’s look at Minneapolis, where Chauvin was suspended immediately, fired within 18 hours, charged in a week, and convicted in less than a year. He’ll probably get executed before the end of this year. That’s real leadership. Only a fantasy land is an online tool a real solution.
HPD has had leftist Democrat leadership for 40 years straight. If there are racism problems, systemic racism, unwokeness, or whatever we are bitching about, why is that? No right wingers were involved.