For decades, law enforcement misconduct has been shrouded in secrecy, hidden behind a “blue wall of silence.” Until independent projects cropped up in 2012, even simple statistics were unknown. From 2020-2023, NACDL’s Full Disclosure Project helped defenders build databases tracking misconduct on over 150,000 law enforcement officers. This report examines how defense lawyers have pioneered the movement to track police misconduct, the impact of their work, and recommendations for other defenders looking to join the movement. [Released September 2023]

From 2020-2023, NACDL’s Full Disclosure Project disrupted the culture of secrecy that shields law enforcement misconduct by building technology to track law enforcement misconduct, empowering defenders with tools and training, and advocating for greater police transparency and accountability.

NACDL’s Full Disclosure Project co-hosted a 4-day online convening in collaboration with the Invisible Institute and WITNESS in November 2021 to bring together practitioners to discuss the potential benefits and harms of collecting and disseminating policing data and connect data collections efforts with organizing aimed at effecting change. The report aims to share the key principles, tensions and practices that we discussed; help guide ongoing conversations and development of best practices; and inform future project planning and funding decisions. [Released March 2023]

The following articles provide guidance on how to get started for anyone interested in tracking police misconduct. They cover hidden places to look for data, how to create a feasible collection plan, and effective systems for organizing your data. The approaches range from the advanced and involved to the low-tech and simple – so you can apply these methods with whatever resources you have. Whether you're a defender, NGO, or community activist, use these to better track police misconduct in your community.

Before choosing a tool for organizing misconduct data, establish your project scope with a data collection plan. This will identify your priority agencies, data sources, and collaborators. Once you have a data collection plan, consider how you want to store that data.

We simplified the FDP Application's data model and put it into the online spreadsheet called Airtable. Here are instructions on how to use FDP's simplified data model on the free online platform Airtable to track police misconduct data.

If you choose to use a shared folder, follow these best practices to make it easier to sort and process the data.

The Full Disclosure Project application allows collaboration with multiple organizations in a single database, sharing as much information as desired while protecting legally privileged information. There can only be one host of the application who maintains the database on their server. However, if desired, the host organization can grant access to external organizations (called guest organizations) to view and edit data. Any system users will be assigned to the organization(s) to which they belong, which will ensure that they only see what the organization is permitted to view.

This page describes the skills and responsibilities that can be useful when running the Full Disclosure Project (FDP) application. Use it to allocate responsibilities among existing staff or to guide your hiring process.

Here are resources for sending public record requests

The first step to planning a data project is to determine your project’s scope. A robust data collection plan is important to any law enforcement misconduct tracking project. This page will guide you in defining your data sources, what you want to track, how you will obtain them, any barriers to access them, and who will manage and access your information.

Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) provides electronic public access to federal court records. PACER can be a very handy tool for finding federal civil rights cases about police misconduct.  Those interested in tracking police misconduct should consider systematically searching PACER at regular intervals (daily, weekly, or monthly) and downloading all cases filed against the police department and its’ officers. PACER can also be searched on an ad hoc basis for cases against a specific officer.

When gathering police misconduct data, consider collecting both Misconduct Data – information about the actions of individual officers, as well as Background Data – general information about which officers are in a department, how the department is structured, their official policies etc.

Learn more about the project: nacdl.org/FullDisclosure 

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, a professional society, offers the following comments for the White House’s consideration. … NACDL has particular expertise in the collection of law enforcement data. Since 2020, NACDL’s Full Disclosure Project has managed an open-source web application to track, aggregate, and analyze law enforcement misconduct data. NACDL also collaborates with advanced computing and data science partners to develop tools and processes that automate collecting and digesting police data.