Activists who have been protesting over incidents in which law-enforcement officers killed unarmed black men are calling on the FBI to do a better job tracking incidents of police brutality by having those numbers logged into a national database and broken down by race, Al-Jazeera reports.
Activists and researchers believe the current system is not comprehensive enough. "The way the FBI collects data under its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program makes it impossible to know exactly how many Americans are killed by law-enforcement officials each year. Local and state departments only report such information on a voluntary basis, according to an emailed statement from FBI Relief Media Liaison Billy Estok,” Al-Jazeera explains.
To further shed light on the disparities that exist between the rates at which black people versus white people are killed by law enforcement, the activists want the data to be broken down by race and other factors.
The report reads: “Activists have called on federal agencies to create a national public database of police shootings, use of excessive force, misconduct complaints, arrests and more—all broken down by race and other demographic factors, Nelson told Al-Jazeera.”
A coalition of activists on Wednesday delivered demands to the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, calling for such a database to be created and for the agencies to investigate the excessive force that some police officers use against black people. The activists are also demanding that the agencies look into the federal grants given to local police departments that are encouraging militarization.
Read more at Al-Jazeera.