This research-ready data set includes data on police use-of-force incidents across all 468 New Jersey municipal police departments and the New Jersey State Police between 2012 and 2016, compiled by NJ Advance Media.
Police are required to fill out the forms and detail what happened when they punch, pepper spray or use other force against someone in the state. NJ Advance Media filed 506 public records requests and received more than 70,000 forms covering 2012 through 2016. The data was cleaned, analyzed and compiled by department and officer to create a searchable database of use-of-force incidents and a premium data download, available here.
The premium data download includes:
- Police use-of-force data that is sortable and quantifiable by town, officer, incident date or type of force, standardized by commonly accepted categories of force.
- A full accounting of every form, which each has 40 to 60 data points with every detail an officer included about a specific incident. Among the data: date, type of force, race, age, incident type, injuries, reasons for force and charges.
- Documentation outlining the methodology, data sources and a data dictionary.
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Provided in collaboration with NJ Advance Media
