USA Today publishes database of local police misconduct

USA Today screenshot

USA Today reporters John Kelly and Mark Nichols revealed this week that 85,000 law-enforcement officers across the nation have been investigated or disciplined for misconduct over the past decade.

Offenders have planted evidence, harassed women, dealt drugs, driven drunk and assaulted their spouses or domestic partners. Records of such transgressions are often “filed away, rarely seen by anyone outside their departments,” USA Today reports. “Police unions and their political allies have worked to put special protections in place ensuring some records are shielded from public view, or even destroyed.”

The USA Today Network, Gannett Co.'s brand name for its newspaper chain, has gathered those records and started publishing them. The first collection includes 30,000 officers in 44 states. It's searchable by name of an officer or agency, or you can get a lost of all the decertified officers in each state.