Justice Department trials system to count killings by US law enforcement

The US government is trialling a new open-source system to count killings by police around the country, in the most comprehensive official effort so far to accurately record the number of deaths at the hands of American law enforcement.

The pilot program was announced by the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, on Monday and follows concerted calls from campaigners and lawmakers for better official data on police killings, after a nationwide debate about race and policing was sparked by protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.

In anticipation of the launch, further details of the Department of Justice program were shared with the Guardian, which publishes The Counted, a crowdsourced investigative project that attempts to track all those killed by US law enforcement in 2015. The program is understood to be already active, with a view to full implementation at the start of 2016.

“We’re going through this process of identifying [online] key words, key sources, we’re not just relying on law enforcement,” said the official.

“We think then we’ll have a more robust program to stand up in 2016 [and] we’re confident we’ll have the true number, or something close to the true number [of deaths].”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/05/justice-department-trials-system-count-killings-us-law-enforcement-the-counted