© Jim Young / ReutersA Cook County Sheriff police officer (L) points his gun at a man who walked up to him while officers were conducting an unrelated street stop in the Austin neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois, United States, September 9, 2015.
The FBI will revamp its heavily criticized system for tracking fatal police shootings in the US. For the first time, the bureau will release data about all incidents that result in severe injury or death to civilians at the hands of police.
"We are responding to a real human outcry," Stephen L. Morris, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, told the
Washington Post. "People want to know what police are doing, and they want to know why they are using force. It always fell to the bottom before. It is now the highest priority," he added.
Morris, who described the agency's current system for tracking fatal police shootings as a "travesty," said the data would be "much more granular" than in the past. It's likely to include such details as the gender and race of law enforcement officers and suspects involved in the incidents, the level of danger the officer faced, as well as the kind of weapons wielded by either party, be it a pepper spray or just a fist.
Most importantly, the data will be collected and shared with the public in "near real-time," as the incidents occur, Morris said, instead of being mentioned only at the end of the year.
David Klinger, a former police officer and a long-time advocate of a better system, said he was skeptical about its implementation.
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