The Detroit Police Board of Commissioners has launched an online tool meant to share more police accountability data with the public.
The online dashboard shows the number of citizen complaints against Detroit police officers going back to 2012. It also details the nature of those complaints, how long it took to investigate each one, and aggregated, anonymized demographic data about both the accused officers and complaining citizens.
Quantez Pressley, who chairs the civilian oversight board's citizen complaint committee, said the tool aims to provide a comprehensive view of complaints filed against law enforcement, and the findings of investigations into those complaints.
"This is about giving citizens the ability to see trends, to understand outcomes, as well as to engage more deeply in our shared mission to ensure fairness and accountability in policing," Pressley said.
Board members said they hope to make more data available to the public soon — if the Detroit Police Department agrees to share.
Jerome Warfield, the board’s chief investigator, said one piece of data the commissioners are looking to share is how many complaints against officers were ultimately sustained. "I think that's most important to our community, to know what was the consequence of the misconduct that we found was sustained through the investigation,” he said.
On Thursday evening, the dashboard showed 2,362 open civilian complaints pending.
