During the meeting, representatives chose the FBI to manage the collection. Douglas A. Middleton, retired deputy county manager for public safety, Henrico County, Virginia, and past chair of the National Use-of-Force Task Force, explained why: “The FBI already manages multiple national databases. They have the capacity to capture data and the ability to create the systems to report the data in a manner that everyone in the country should be familiar [with]. So it was a natural path to ask the FBI to take the lead.”²

Three months later, on December 3, 2015, the Criminal Justice Information Services Advisory Policy Board approved a series of motions to establish a new collection of data on law enforcement use of force. The FBI Director signed the recommendation on February 9, 2016, and Keenan, Middleton, and a dozen other law enforcement representatives joined the task force formed to oversee the design of the database.

The result of the group’s efforts over the next 2 years was the National Use-of-Force Data Collection. “In order for the public to believe in what you’re doing, they need information,” explained task force member Robert Gualtieri, sheriff of Pinellas County, Florida. “We wanted to provide a national use-of-force data collection that would provide objective data with the right data points, the right data elements, so that people could have information available to judge for themselves.”³

Task force member Gina Hawkins, chief of the Fayetteville, North Carolina, Police Department, expounded upon Gualtieri’s statement. “We are a data-driven society. Why would we not have this data for ourselves to utilize as a nation? That data enables us to evaluate our tactics, determine if we need better equipment for our use-of-force data, determine if we need any type of extra training. But more importantly, what that data really does is allow us to be transparent in the force that we use in our everyday situations.”⁴

After months of intensive work by the task force and FBI staff, the new National Use-of-Force Data Collection was officially launched on January 1, 2019. Law enforcement agencies throughout the United States now can contribute their use-of-force data to this collection. The voluntary data collection’s goal is not to provide insight into specific use-of-force cases, but to offer a comprehensive view of the circumstances, subjects, and officers involved in such incidents nationwide. Data collected include dates, times, locations, and other specifics about the incidents, but does not include names of the individuals involved.

“We’re not talking about the average, run-of-the-mill, daily uses of force,” said Gualtieri. “We’re talking about situations that are narrowly defined. The officer’s force results in death or serious bodily injury or the officer discharges a firearm at or in the direction of a person.”⁵ According to Middleton, most agencies will have only a few cases to report. “The vast majority of law enforcement agencies are really not going to have that much to enter. I think there is a sense that there will be, but there isn’t,” he said.⁶

The task force members stressed that participation is key to making the collection effective. “The validity of the entire system and the process hinges upon accurate data,” said Middleton. “By that, I mean covering as many law enforcement agencies, nationally, that we can get to participate. Local, state, federal, college campuses—everybody. The database itself is only as good as what’s put into it, so the greater the volume of information we have, the clearer and sharper the picture we have of what’s happening with these incidents,” he said.⁷ Gualtieri added, “If the data pool isn’t large enough, it’s not going to tell the accurate story of what’s happening and what’s not happening. It needs to be representative.”⁸