Since 2017 USA Today has been building a database of law enforcement officers who have been decertified in an attempt to increase police transparency and weed out bad apples within different agencies.
In those two years, the news organization has collected more than 220,000 records across 44 states.
USA Today found roughly 15% of the officers, roughly 30,000, have been decertified by that officer’s state.
Today they put that database online for people to search through.
The news organization also wants to add to the list and are hoping the six other states eventually comply with its sunshine state request. It is also hoping other police accountability organizations and agencies join in and help fill out the database.
In its release, USA Today points out that there is a national database available for agencies to perform background checks and pull information of infractions about potential new hires.
The paper also found at least one case where multiple agencies either choose not to use that database or ignore an officer’s infractions.
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