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Bay Area Police, Tech Bolster Obama's Police Data Transparency Initiative

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) -- Bay Area law enforcement and tech companies are working side by side to bolster police transparency through President Barack Obama's Police Data Initiative.

A year after the Obama administration launched the Police Data Initiative and urged law enforcement agencies to voluntarily release their use of force statistics, 53 police departments in the U.S. have committed to the program. Twelve of those jurisdictions are in California, including eight in the Bay Area.

Launched in 2015, with 21 jurisdictions, the Police Data Initiative, is comprised of "law enforcement agencies, technologists and researchers committed to improving the relationship between citizens and police through uses of data that increase transparency, build community trust, and strengthen accountability," according to the White House.

The Police Data Initiative came from the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, which was created after many highly-publicized fatal officer-involved shootings rang out across the country.

When the program launched last Spring, only Oakland and Richmond had committed to it from the Bay Area. Now, Bay Area law enforcement is a top participant in the program. California jurisdictions account for almost a quarter of participants in the national initiative.

The White House announced last week that of the 53 jurisdictions covering more than 41 million people, eight Bay Area police departments have committed to releasing data in order to build community trust. The jurisdictions are: San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Rosa, Richmond, Vallejo, San Jose and Menlo Park.

But the U.S. has around 17,000 law enforcement jurisdictions that cover over 260 million other people, and those jurisdictions have not committed to the open data initiative.

Bay Area tech companies are also partnering with the Obama administration to bolster the Police Data Initiative after the President issued a call to action, asking the private sector and non-profit organizations to help further the goals of the initiative.

OpenGov, a cloud-based technology company in Redwood City, is among a handful of Police Data Initiative partners committed to helping local law enforcement with their software needs during the reporting process.

San Francisco-based Nextdoor, a private and free social network for neighbors, will roll out a voluntary polling feature to receive data from residents in the community, as well as a "forward to police" feature that will allow residents to send posts to police in an effort to keep law enforcement clued in on community issues and allow them to weigh in those issues.

The California Department of Justice in September launched OpenJustice, an online data tool that publicly catalogs arrest, assault and death statistics in California. According to the White House, OpenJustice will also be hosting a White House Police Data Initiative convention for participating California jurisdictions.

Other U.S. states that had a significant number of jurisdictions committed to the Police Data Initiative include Virginia with four, Washington with three, and Texas, North Carolina, Vermont, Florida, New Jersey, Indiana, Ohio and Maryland with two jurisdictions each.

By Hannah Albarazi - Follow her on Twitter: @hannahalbarazi.

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