Few Kentucky police agencies, including Lexington’s, shared use of force data with FBI
Few Kentucky law enforcement agencies are sharing data with federal officials on how often an officer injures or kills someone, recently released data shows.
Only 28 of 529 Kentucky law enforcement agencies submitted data on the use of force, including lethal and nonlethal shootings, to the FBI, according to an FBI database.
That’s about 5 percent of eligible agencies.
But of the 28 reporting agencies— 16 were Kentucky State Police posts.
That means only 12 individual agencies voluntarily supplied the data. That makes participation in the first-ever nationwide database on use of force limited to a little more than 2 percent of all Kentucky law enforcement agencies.
Lexington Police Department and the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department did not share use-of-force data with federal officials, according to the database.
Last year was the first year agencies could submit the data. It’s voluntary. There was confusion on how it should be reported to the FBI, Lexington police officials said.
“There was previously some confusion because normally our reporting of data to the FBI is done through Kentucky State Police,” said Brenna Angel, a spokeswoman for Lexington police. “The FBI considers Kentucky a bulk-reporting state, with state police submitting the data for most agencies. However, it’s my understanding that Lexington police does not use a particular form that KSP needs for this specific reporting.”
Lexington has sorted out the problem and will be reporting the data directly to the FBI for 2019 and 2020, Angel said.
Officials with the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department also said there were technical hiccups with reporting the data. The department sent its data for 2019 and hopes the FBI will correct its list of participating agencies.
“Fayette County Sheriff Kathy Witt supports this data collection and has made a formal recommendation to the Law Enforcement, Justice and Accountability Subcommittee of the Mayor’s Commission for Racial Justice and Equality to require all Lexington law enforcement agencies to submit this data,” said Scooter Stein, a spokesman for the department. “She further suggested the committee consider statewide legislation to mandate submission since this data collection is voluntary.”
Mayor Linda Gorton’s Commission for Racial Justice and Equality will make its final recommendations in September. The commission is expected to make concrete proposals to address inequalities in education, law enforcement, economic opportunities and health care. Those subcommittees have been meeting for several months.
Last month, the FBI said 5,043 federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies submitted use-of-force data to the National Use-of-Force Data Collection for 2019. Those agencies represent roughly 41 percent of all police officers. Agencies that provided data showing zero use-of-force incidents for 2019 were counted as participating, according to the FBI web site.
The FBI will not release data on use of force until participation reaches more than 60 percent of all police officers. Law enforcement agencies asked the FBI to start collecting the data after the 2014 police shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, in Ferguson, Mo.
Qualifying use-of-force incidents include any action that resulted in the death or serious bodily injury of a person or the discharge of a firearm at or in the direction of a person.
The data, if law enforcement participates, will shed light on when officers use deadly force and how often it occurs. That data, and other data about police operations, has long been difficult to get.
Law enforcement agencies that voluntarily sent the data include Kentucky’s largest police department and some of the smallest law enforcement offices in the state:
- Adair County Constable District 6
- Bellevue Police Department
- Boone County Sheriff’s Department
- Flatwoods Police Department
- Frankfort Police Department
- Graves County Sheriff’s Department
- Laurel County Sheriff’s Department
- Louisville Metro Police Department
- Manchester Police Department
- Pulaski County Constable District 5
- Scott County Sheriff’s Department
- Kentucky State Police 16 Posts
Shawn Butler, executive director of the Kentucky Association of Chiefs of Police, said participation would increase if law enforcement agencies understand why it’s important to participate.
“I think it’s an education issue,” Butler said. “I think it’s something that we need to work on.”
Butler said it would also be easier for law enforcement agencies to participate if the use of force was part of the crime statistics police departments regularly submit to the Kentucky State Police, which then reports to the FBI.
Scott County Chief Deputy Jearl Porter said Kentucky has lots of tiny police departments. Few have police-involved shootings. That’s likely why so few have participated to date, he said. The Scott County Sheriff’s Department did not have any fatal or near-fatal use-of-force incidents in 2019 but still sent in its use-of-force data to the FBI.
“We get somewhere from two to four requests from the FBI a year,” Porter said. “They are for different types of data, but they are entirely voluntary.”
This story was originally published August 7, 2020 at 11:56 AM.
