The New York Police Department is trying to purge misbehavior from its ranks by creating a database that will allow officials to easily track lawsuits, misconduct charges and internal investigations targeted at officers.
The tracking system will collect data from the New York’s law department, comptroller’s office and police office of inspector general, according to the
Associated Press.
It will allow supervisors to identify and discipline problem officers more quickly.
{mosads}”The goal is not discipline alone,” Lawrence Byrne, the deputy commissioner for legal matters told the AP. “The goal is to see whether there are things that need to be addressed through additional training, and whether we need to amend or change policy.”
The department has worked to reform itself since the choking death of Eric Garner while in police custody a year ago.
Police critics applauded the initiative.
“In the same way they want to do predictive policing for crime, they also want to predict the success or failure with their officers,” Richard Emery, the head of the Civilian Complain Review Board told the AP. “To train and guide people, give people the tools to be more successful than the current model might ascribe.”
The department has paid $773 million in legal claims over the past five years.
The database will be supervised by the department’s Risk Management Bureau. It is in charge of implementing a court order that ruled New York’s stop-and-frisk policy violated civil rights.
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