93.9 The Eagle – The News and Talk of Columbia, MO
(AP) – Missouri became a focal point for officer-involved shootings after Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson in 2014, yet only a few of the state’s police agencies submit data to an FBI program that tracks those shootings.
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch analysis has found that the voluntary National Use-of-Force Data Collection effort has been slow to catch on, even among St. Louis-area police departments.
The program gathers information on fatal and nonfatal shootings and records instances when officers fire their weapons but strike no one. Proponents say the data collection is essential in understanding how officers make life-and-death decisions. They say the information also can inform police leaders about how to better train officers.
The FBI says only 13 of about 600 agencies in Missouri had submitted a report through Nov. 22.
