Chapter 2 Data sources

2.1 ProPublica Dataset

We have used the Civilian Complaints Against New York City Police Officers dataset made available available by ProPublica

• The dataset was released on July 2020.
• The dataset contains the details of 33,358 civilian Misconduct Cases.
• The records span from September 1985 to January 2020.

Important Note:

“This database names about 4,000 of the NYPD’s 36,000 active-duty officers. Every officer in the database has had at least one substantiated allegation.We excluded any allegations that investigators concluded did not occur and were deemed unfounded. We also removed a small number of officers (62) against whom the CCRB had substantiated allegations, but whose substantiated allegations had not gone fully through the NYPD’s administrative prosecution process.” ~ ProPublica

2.2 Police Precincts GIS Data

We have used the service area boundaries data for New York City’s police precincts from ArcGIS. The dataset was used in conjunction with the ProPublica dataset for the interactive plot.