this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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A new database on police use of force and misconduct in California makes public 1.5 million pages of once-secret police records (journalism.berkeley.edu)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Pro@mander.xyz to c/Technology@programming.dev
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Hackernews.

The database — the first of its kind in the nation — will vastly expand public access to internal affairs records that disclose how law enforcement agencies throughout the state handle misconduct allegations as well as uses of police force that result in death or serious injury. The database, funded by the State of California, currently has records from nearly 12,000 cases, including thousands involving police shootings. Every record in the database was released by a law enforcement agency after being redacted in compliance with California’s public records laws. As a result, journalists and members of the public will now be able to search statewide for particular types of misconduct and use-of-force. Police chiefs will be able to use the data to aid in hiring decisions. Researchers will be able to identify trends and patterns.

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[–] Drusas@fedia.io 5 points 2 days ago

This sort of information should be freely in publicly available everywhere in the country. Anyone against that has something to hide.

[–] flandish@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

name. and. shame.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago (3 children)

The team systematically collected, organized and vetted millions of public records, used emerging technologies such as generative AI to build the database, and created from scratch a searchable user-interface.

I'm not sure how to feel about the use of AI that is usually quite error-prone, but I guess it allowed them to categorise and process millions of records instead of hundreds.

[–] onslaught545@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago

LLMs actually tend to excel at this kind of work. They are basically statistical engines capable of ingesting and parsing enormous amounts of data very quickly.

[–] flandish@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

ehh it could be as simple as asking gpt “make me a schema that is fitting for the data in this xls.”

[–] Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

LLMs aren't the only form of AI, just the one the media likes to also that buzzword onto the most. There's are some machine learning models that are good at this kind of route categorization

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

There are, but I'm 99% sure it would've been called machine learning or not mentioned at all

I'm not bothered enough to check, whatever they used, this is a great data, a lot of work is performed, and it can be corrected on the go if any issues are found

[–] onslaught545@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Generative AI and LLMs are basically synonymous.

[–] Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 days ago

...to idiots.