Texas does not follow the police tracking at national level. Few states in the country do it

The deaths caused by police tracking are at a constant level. These pursuits and their sometimes fatal consequences were more accentuated in cities like Fort Worth. But the federal data barely scratch the surface -it represents only the pursuit that ended in a fatality.

In Texas, no one knows how many you drive the police initiate each year. Not the public safety department in Texas. Not families whose loved ones are killed or injured in search. Not Texas parliamentarians tasked to adopt the police legislation.

But Texas is not the only blind man flying – the vast majority of states do not have a system for pursuing police activities. This is part of the local police departments, each with its own method of authorization, classification and tracking of activities.

In order to understand the total number of activities in a state, residents should gather information from each department through open and expensive process applications.

“Some people, unfortunately, from the law enforcement industry until today, do not understand the real nature and the ability to help their laws to apply the law,” said Alex del Carmen, a criminal at the Tarleton State University. “And it does not appreciate the importance of collecting data … The importance of being interpreted, analyzed and implemented.”

A revision of state policies by Kera News and Fort Worth report found that even in the states where the pursuit takes place, their processes are not always created equal.

The review has identified six states with a version of a state database on police activities, but these states differ whether local agencies are required – or simply encouraged – to report their pursuit to a regulatory body. And when there are reporting requirements, they are not always applied strictly.

But Del Carmen said that if the states have rules to follow the police activities, these rules should be respected and applied regularly.

“It should be a mandate,” said Del Carmen. “And what it means is that the public should expect from the police agencies that it respects the principles, guidelines and law in the same way that applies it to the public.”

Mandated reporting

California and Texas He led the country in the entire victims of follow -up between 1996 and 2015. This fact, along with an alarming number of accidents that injured or killed the innocent, inspired the former state senator Gloria Romero and her colleague at the author of California Senate’s draft law 719 in 2005.

California has already asked the law enforcement agencies to follow certain information after a pursuit, such as the cause of search and if someone involved in pursuit was injured. When SB 719 entered into force in 2006, it extended these requirements to include information such as the conditions of the pursuit, whether the pursuit has led to a collision that injured or killed an uninhabited Bystander and the result of the search.

“I think only the more information we have, the more educated we are about what works, what and what they might need to change,” Romero said. “And if it works, then you know what? Leave it alone. “

The agencies must present a form that details the circumstances of a pursuit to the California highway patrol within 30 days of pursuit. CHP then compile the data in a Annual report and presents it to the state parliamentarians. The Agency also maintains an internal tracking report used to report and review Chase data.

Other states have had policies for several decades. Minnesota imposed his law enforcement agencies to report prosecution data to the State Criminal Retention Office For 36 years. The information goes through the additional agency reporting system and are published in Explorer of Data on Minnesota crime.

In Pennsylvania, parliamentarians created their own state Police are pursuing the database tracking In 1994. And since the current system came into force in 1996, all Pennsylvania police departments have been forced to follow the police activities and report them to the Pennsylvania State Police.

The PSP then analyzes the data and sends an annual report on the police pursuit to various entities, such as the independent citizen police revision councils. The reports provide a general look at why the activities, the number of victims and arrests were initiated and ceased.

These data are used to tell the law enforcement agencies that work and what is not about pursuits. But it is up to the individual agencies to make these changes, said Adam Reed, the director of the PSP communications.

“It is a truly important tool for police departments to have a look at this data and take a look at the trends to see how they can improve and make things safer,” said Reed.

Some states have more recently attracted the benefits of tracking national tracking data. Following a series of high profile pursuit incidents, Connecticut MPs in 2019 began to apply the law for Report information about their activities to the state, which is then compiled in an annual report.

The report details specific data at the department level, including the number of sworn officers, the number of pursuits and the tracking rate at 100 police officers. The Connecticut law also imposes annual reports to parliamentarians, with any legislative recommendations based on the official data officials they collected.

Inadequate application

In Pennsylvania, the law enforcement agencies maintain different reporting procedures, so that the state data is not comprehensive. A recent NBC Philadelphia investigation has been found The City Police Department has not reported dozens of activities at the 2019 PSP.

The agency said that NBC Philadelphia State Police is not responsible whether local law enforcement agencies report their data correctly or completely. The law does not provide the state police to constrain the local departments to follow the prosecution data more diligently, nor are these departments face consequences.

Reed acknowledged that this lack of data leaves an incomplete image of police tracking in the whole state.

“But we strive to ensure the cooperation of all Pennsylvania police agencies and we strongly request that the appropriate data be entered in a timely manner,” he said. “This will help us paint a bigger and clearer image of everything that happens.”

A couple asserts itself to the West, the reporting is less thorough. The training council and standards regarding the application of the law in Illinois easily recognizes that, while following the activities in an annual report, this report does not include each chase.

“The reported research is probably just a small percentage of what is happening in the whole state,” wrote the executive director Keith Callaway in a report of 2023. “Agencies have their own documents and many do not submit documents through the training council and standards regarding the application of the law in Illinois. ”

Wisconsin transport department imposes the law enforcement agencies Use a form To gather information about the activities of the police every year and to include the circumstances of the pursuit, the result, the number of wounds or deaths and other relevant information.

But this information is not easily accessible online, as in other states. The department currently works on a new platform to make the tracking data more easily shared, according to a spokesman.

Barriers for implementation

There are a number of reasons why the police departments could not carefully follow the tracking data or at all, said Del Carmen. Creating a standardized method for collecting tracking data on more than 2,700 law enforcement agencies in a state as high as Texas, for example, could prove a challenge.

Some departments consider the collection and continuous analysis of data as an administrative burden. Agencies at national level deal Deficiencies of officers and limited budgets.

But Del Carmen said that overcoming these challenges in Texas is possible, and agencies that have an existing police tracking system should stick to their promises. State databases can help determine what works – and what – when it comes to pursuits. This can be used to update policies, as needed, said del Carmen.

“Finally, the application of the law works directly for the public,” said Del Carmen. “And so, in the end, this is perhaps the biggest sign of transparency and responsibility.”

The legislation of Romero, which required a more standardized training on police tracking, did not pass without an initial impulse from the California law. Compromise was a necessity, she said.

It was also a bipartidist effort. Romero was a democrat during his time-now is Republican-Iiar SB 719 was a co-author of the former California senator, Bob Margett, Republican. Although the political makeup in Texas is much different from that of California, Romero said that these big states must lead the nation in the transparency of police tracking data, even if progress is incremental and is facing resistance.

“I always think, don’t be afraid of data. The data should help us. I believe in the data, ”said Romero. “I think that with as much protection and rules and training we also have the application of this, I think we are in a better position to protect ourselves doing the right thing.”

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Emily Wolf is a government liability reporter for the Fort Worth report. Contact it at [email protected] or @_wolfemily