NEAR Act

Right now D.C. Police only log a limited amount of information about their stops. like the date, age, race, and location. But the D.C. Council wants police to do a lot more. So in 2016, it passed the Neighborhood Engagement Achieves Results, or NEAR Act. Among other things, the NEAR Act requires police to record more than 20 additional categories about stop and frisk, including the violation that led to the stop, if a search was conducted, the reason for the search, and whether an arrest was made because of that stop or search. But two years later, D.C. Police still haven't complied with that law, by collecting stop and frisk data the way the NEAR Act requires. This, despite the fact D.C. Council gave the police department $150,000 almost two years ago to make whatever changes were necessary to start collecting that stop and frisk data in one centralized report so it can be studied for trends or possible targeting of Black people in police stops. This is law, and the Metropolitan Police Department is not above the law. Wednesday, ACLU of District of Columbia Executive Director Monica Hopkins sent this letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser demanding records and data about stop and frisk by D.C. Police or the Department's plan to finally start collecting that stop and frisk data required in the way the NEAR Act lays out. The 8-page letter also signed by Stop Police Terror D.C. and Black Lives Matter D.C. cites our 6-month Special Assignment Unit investigation which found more than 80% of police stop and frisks from 2010-2016 involved a Black person. The letter to the mayor also highlighted responses from D.C. police included in our follow-up investigation from last night. In that report, the Department answering critical questions about when that stop and frisk data collection might finally begin. Stunningly, D.C. Police told us an end date for the work to start collecting comprehensive stop and frisk data has not been confirmed. And that the $150,000 D.C. Council gave police to do just that, has not been expended. Meaning they haven't spent a dime of the money meant to pay for the new stop and frisk data collection system almost two years after the Department received it. It's a shell game of sorts of does the data actually exist? If it does, where is it? And why can't you just lift up those shells, and allow us to sort of see what's going on? The ACLU's letter threatens legal action against D.C. Police if the city can't produce evidence they are actively working on a system to collect that stop and frisk data. If filed, that lawsuit would be meant to court-order the Department to start collecting the stop and frisk data required by the NEAR Act law. What does it say to you that it's taken D.C. Police two years to do this and it's still not done? Number one, they don't care, they don't think it's important and I also think they want to cover how up pervasive and how terrible their interactions with Black folks are. D.C. Police would not agree to an interview with us about stop and frisk data collection required by the NEAR Act and why the Department still isn't following that part of the law two years after it was passed. We did submit questions in writing to the Department, which they responded to in an email. We have posted that entire exchange to our website. Eric Flack, WUSA9.