DENVER — A new state-published report that is intended to show how Colorado police are interacting with citizens, especially with the use of force, is so lacking with data from police agencies, that the report itself admits it can’t serve as a reliable reference yet.
In 2020, Colorado’s legislature passed laws designed to increase police accountability, including requiring the approximate 260 police agencies in the state to submit data to the state showing the number of contacts with citizens and how often force was used on them.
Agencies are also required to share the racial and ethnic makeup of citizen contacts along with how force was used, from batons, pepper spray and guns.
In the first published report of its kind, the 2022 report contains data from 146 police agencies which is only 57% of the police agencies required under the law to share their citizen contact data.
“...this report does not give a full picture of law enforcement contacts and use of force,” the report says.
The report was authored by the Department of Safety’s Division of Criminal Justice (DCJ) and published in January, which was six months later than expected.
The report also only includes data for August through December 2022.
The authors of the report attribute missing data due to “challenges” with a new method of data collection that many police agencies are not familiar with yet.
“Whenever implementing a system of this scope, one can expect unique challenges, and these issues did lead to some agency collecting and reporting delays through no fault of their own,” the report says.
The DCJ said in the report it anticipates future reports will contain more complete data.
Democratic Representative Leslie Herod who spearheaded police accountability laws in Colorado called the report disappointing and said it may be time to give the Attorney General's office power to force police agencies to comply with reporting requirements.
“Absolutely, I'm disappointed. But we need to dig in and see why. Again, if it's just strict non compliance, then there are tools that we need to put at our disposal to ensure there is compliance. If there's something that we can do to help, we'll do that, too,” Rep. Herod said.
Several large police agencies did not submit data, including the Denver Police Department which likely involved tens-of-thousands of citizen contacts.
A spokesperson for Denver Police cited the “challenges” referenced in the report, but could not immediately give specifics on why data was not provided to the state.
“Now that a foundation and expectations have been established, we are confident agencies will continue to collaborate and partner with DCJ to provide data as mandated,” a spokesperson for the Division of Criminal Justice wrote to 9NEWS over email.
From August to December 2022, the report showed there were more than 200,000 police contacts with citizens with about 0.3% of such contacts resulting in a use of force.
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