Check out these police accountability resources. All of them do a great public service and deserve your support. If yours is not listed here or you would like your listing updated — or you know of additional projects that should be included — reach out.
Police Records Access Project
Roughly 1.5 million pages of records from 12,000 officer-misconduct and use-of-force cases in California, jointly published by CalMatters, KQED, The Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and LAist
https://clean.calmatters.org | https://policerecords.kqed.org
by UC Berkeley and Stanford University
Fatal Encounters
Impartial, comprehensive, and searchable national database of people killed during interactions with law enforcement with 29,000 records
https://fatalencounters.org
by D. Brian Burghart
Transparent California
California’s largest public pay and pension database
https://transparentcalifornia.com
by the Nevada Policy Research Institute
CopMonitor SF
A collection of records about local police, sheriffs, and other government actors that are of interest to the public, including victims’ families, activists, civil rights advocates, criminal defense attorneys, public officials, and journalists
https://sfpublicdefender.org/copmonitor/
by the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office
Open Justice
California Department of Justice transparency initiative
https://openjustice.doj.ca.gov/
by the Office of the Attorney General (California)
OpenOversight
A public, searchable database of law enforcement officers (ICE, CPB, Chicago, NYC, Los Angeles, Oakland, University of California, Berkeley, and more)
https://openoversight.lucyparsonslabs.com
by Lucy Parsons Labs
Who’s That Cop?
Roster information for Beverly Hills, La Verne, Los Angeles, and San Jose Police Departments
https://whosthatcop.org
No Secret Police
A public records database created to bring transparency to police agencies in California, starting with the Santa Ana Police Department
https://www.nosecretpolice.net
by Ben Camacho / Inadvertent
Watch the Watchers
A copwatch tool that publishes public records about the LAPD, including headshot photos
https://watchthewatchers.net/
by Stop LAPD Spying Coalition
LAPD Arrest Data Map
Interactive map of 300,000 LAPD arrests from 2019-2022
https://arrests.lacontroller.io/
by City Controller of Los Angeles, Kenneth Mejia
People’s Database for Community-Based Police Accountability
Non-public internal resource used for organizing purposes and shared with trusted sources and community members upon request
https://lab.witness.org/berkeley-copwatch-database/
by Berkeley Copwatch and WITNESS
Brady List
A public-facing database of information about police misconduct, public complaints, use-of-force reports, and more
https://giglio-bradylist.com/ (related podcast)
by Level Playing Field / Johann Drolshagen
National Police Index
Police employment history data from across the U.S., including California
https://national.cpdp.co/
by Invisible Institute
Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database
Anonymized database of crimes committed by nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers across the U.S., including California
(See also, unanonymized Abused by the Badge reporting by the Washington Post.)
https://policecrime.bgsu.edu/
by Bowling Green State University
National Police Funding Database
Data on federal grants and military equipment transfers to local law enforcement agencies, including information about police misconduct complaints, consent decrees, and settlement amounts
https://policefundingdatabase.org
by Thurgood Marshall Institute at NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
National Registry of Exonerations
Database of more than 3,400 exonerations since 1989, including over 300 in California
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/detaillist.aspx
by UCI Newkirk Center for Science & Society
Atlas of Surveillance
Documenting Police Tech with Open Source Research
https://atlasofsurveillance.org
by Electrontic Frontier Foundation
Behind the Badge
Department by department, making New York’s hidden law enforcement disciplinary histories public.
https://www.policefilesny.com (No relation, despite similar URL.)
By Sammy Sussman, Dillon Bergin, Sanjana Bhambhani, et al.
Law Enforcement Lookup
Law enforcement misconduct data in New York City
(formerly CAPstat, NYC Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit Data, 2015 to June 2018)
https://legalaidnyc.org/law-enforcement-look-up/
by Legal Aid Society
The Force Report
Comprehensive statewide database of police use of force in New Jersey
https://force.nj.com
by NJ Advance Media
Citizens Police Data Project
Collects and publishes information about police misconduct in Chicago
https://cpdp.co
by Invisible Institute
Profiling the Police
Eyewitness video as a source of data about police abuse
https://elgrito.witness.org
by El Grito de Sunset Park and WITNESS
Mapping Police Violence
Research collaborative collecting comprehensive data on police killings nationwide to quantify the impact of police violence in communities
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org
by Samuel Sinyangwe, DeRay Mckesson, and Brittany Packnett Cunningham
Police Scorecard
Evaluating the police in every state, including California
https://policescorecard.org
by Campaign Zero (Samuel Sinyangwe, DeRay Mckesson, and Brittany Packnett Cunningham) and Manifest Interactive
Who Are California’s Criminal Cops?
Database of hundreds of officers convicted of a crime in the last decade
https://extras.mercurynews.com/criminalcops/database/
by The Mercury News
USA Today
Decertified Officers (30,000+ in 44 states)
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/04/24/biggest-collection-police-accountability-records-ever-assembled/2299127002/
by USA TODAY in partnership with Invisible Institute
Buzzfeed
New York Police Misconduct Cases
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kendalltaggart/nypd-police-misconduct-database
by BuzzFeed
Fatal Force
People shot and killed by police in the U.S.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
(2015-2018: original website)
by Washington Post
The Counted
People Killed by Police in the U.S. in 2015 and 2016
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database
by Guardian US
The Appeal
Original journalism covering criminal justice (and other topics)
https://theappeal.org
These efforts set a high bar for excellence and provide inspiration for Police Files.