What insight is in the Albany Police DEPT's complaints data?

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The Albany Police Department (APD) publishes many statistics and visualizations on openAlbany, more than half of all listings originate from the APD and they represent the most current data found on openAlbany.  

There are several datasets related to citizen complaints and we wanted to explore those datasets to understand what we can learn.  The APD posts a data file of all citizen complaints dating back to 2009 (there is some additional data from prior years but it is not significant).  In addition, there is a month-by-month visualization here.   

 We did a small amount of cleaning, deleting any records prior to 2009 and some other invalid data.  

This left 7,223 complaints recorded between 2009-2024.  We can view complaints by year, including both citizen complaints and internal administrative investigations.   2010 had the highest number of complaints (845) and 2018 is the full year with the lowest number of complaints (198).  Note that 2024 includes only 9 months of complaints data.  

 Looking at the trends there are a number of things that could be going on.  Three possibilities are 1) complaints are decreasing, 2) police force training is having an impact, and/or 3) processes to self-report data are not being utilized as frequently since the system’s inception.  However there is nothing in this data that suggests what the root cause is (or causes are) for a decrease in overall complaints; is it a mix of those three possibilities or is something else going on? 

The Albany Police Department is the most active department on openAlbany and should be recognized for the frequency of their open data posts.  Unfortunately, there are some limitations in the usefulness of the Complaints data that APD is posting.  We have several recommendations that will increase the utility of the Complaints data:

1. Allegation coding definitions - the data should be published with a glossary that defines the Allegation codes, i.e. when is “Rudeness” used, what is “Call Handling” and how is that different from “Arrest Authority and Procedures”
2. Allegation coding comprehensiveness - 100% of all Citizen Complaints and Administrative Investigations should be coded with an Allegation, or reasons should be provided when an issue is not coded.  In addition, the APD should be clear about how multiple complaint issues are handled, e.g. if an internal investigation reveals an issue that transcends Use of Force and Vehicle Operations how is that handled?
3. The APD should construct a narrative - ideally quarterly, at the least yearly - that comments on the trends.  This narrative should describe any cause and effect that could be driving trends (e.g. “we instituted ABC training which resulted in XY showing up in the data”)
4. The APD should review and specifically comment on the efficacy and comprehensiveness of self-reporting.  Importantly, when we see a drop in issues (which should be a good thing), we want to ensure that the drop is not an artifact of gaps in self-reporting.

Questions or comments?  email us at AlbanyDataStories@gmail.com