The city of Chattanooga recently released a new dashboard of data sets from the Chattanooga Police Department to track policing and racial equity in light of several high-profile police killings and demonstrations across the country this summer.
ChattaData.org, the city’s public data resource website, now tracks citations, arrests, use-of-force incidents and citizen complaints with the department, breaking down the incidents by race to track trends of inequity. The release comes after scores of protests in Chattanooga this summer over police brutality and continued calls for defunding or divesting from the police department.
“What happened in Kenosha is unacceptable,” Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke said Friday of an incident in Wisconsin last week in which a 29-year-old Black man was shot multiple times in the back by police and partially paralyzed.
“This is so disturbing, So for us, we are still committed to making sure our relationship with the community is positive, that our officers are trained in the best possible ways and that we have policies that make sure these kinds of events don’t happen,” Berke said. “We’ve been compiling information for years and we think that transparency is a good thing that gives more information to our community and assures that accountability is part of what we do every day.”
During the police department’s departmental report to the Chattanooga City Council on Tuesday, Chief David Roddy said the data has spurred questions and conversations within the department, but more importantly it should solicit input from other stakeholders on how to address disparities.