Don’t Let the Police Hide Their Bad Behavior

I often consider data to have a narrative quality, an emotional valence. Some tell a story of triumph, some of heartbreak. What keeps me up at night, though, are the missing data – and particularly data on crime and police behavior.

Omissions are often neither coincidence nor accident. Rather, blind spots arise where violence or abuse of power occurs. Consider the data on sexual assaults and rapes of Hispanics in Houston. Reported incidents declined 43% in the year after Donald Trump’s election. A great success? Probably not: Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo suggested Hispanics did not feel safe reporting crimes in their community because they didn’t trust the policing system, or were afraid of deportation. Crimes reported by non-Hispanics actually increased over the same period.