Every time a police officer in California causes someone serious injury, it must be entered into a new, online system.
The new online tool, called URSUS, is an effort to be more transparent; the system is available to the public.
When officials go to fill out the form, they will fill out a variety of fields, including the race of the injured person, how the interaction started and why force was used.
The information will all be entered online and will become available to the public.
“There needs to be transparency because what you don’t know, you fear,” said Al Abdallah, with the Urban League of San Diego County. Abdallah called URSUS is a big step toward police accountability.
All 800 California police departments must use URSUS to report any incident where officers cause death, serious injury or use force.
“This is extremely important,” said Abdallah. “I think we begin to break down the barriers of ‘do I have a police force that is with me or against me?”
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Captain Vern Sallee, with the Chula Vista Police Department, said they are open to being more transparent.
Although, he notes, some information like citizen complaints and officer involved shootings are already available on their website. You can see that information by clicking here.
“The police departments have to be better at telling the story about why police engage in use of force,” said Sallee.
He believes URSUS will help educate the public, even if high-profile police shootings don't happen often in Chula Vista.
“The truth is this that use of force is used very,very rarely. Certainly less than 1 percent of our contacts,” Sallee said.
Supporters say URSUS is the first statewide database of its kind in the country.
Abdallah hopes it serves as a model for other states.
“We need something like URSUS at the federal level, not just the state level..this is at least a start," he said.
Christie Hill, Senior Policy Strategist at the ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, sent NBC7 a statement, stating in part:
“The new database announced by the California Department of Justice is another step toward expanding publicly available information on police use of force, and we look forward to learning more about it, and how the information will be shared with the wider public. But California law remains one of the most restrictive in the nation when it comes to public access to investigations and discipline in specific incidents of police misconduct. Few departments have committed to releasing video of police shootings and other incidents.”
California police departments must report the use of force data under a state law passed last November.
The Department of Justice unveiled the new database Thursday, but police departments have a few months to comply.
They have to report their 'use of force' incidents that happened in 2016 by January 1, 2017.
You can preview URSUS by clicking here.
