At least one San Francisco police officer is now under investigation after he was accused of altering race data of the people he stopped.
The revelations were top of mind at a police commission meeting Wednesday and action was promised by several agencies as they worry how widespread in the department the practice could be.
Brian Cox with the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office gave his thoughts on the situation.
“Obviously, that’s a huge concern to the public defender’s office because whoever the officer, falsifying race data right goes towards that officer’s credibility, which is important for every case that officer touches,” he said.
It’s unclear at this point how many cases were involved. But it could be dozens. Cox is also concerned about how many other officers are behaving similarly.
“If there are more officers, it could be a systemic issue and I think that undermines all the work the department has done,” he said.
Cox added the incident was the reason he attended the police commission meeting Wednesday.
Paul Henderson, the head of the Department of Police Accountability or DPA also attended the event.
Henderson told NBC Bay Area Wednesday that he can’t speak to the ongoing investigation but said the following:
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”Information that we have seen from investigations that we’ve conducted and from open data that we’ve reviewed, that's indicating that there is a problem,” he said.
It's a problem for the DPA and this commission if they don’t have accurate data to create policies to tackle what they say is proven race disparities within the department.
San Francisco police commissioner Max Carter-Oberstone wants to review the department’s obligated audits of stops.
“For next commission meeting in the chief's report, I would like the department to furnish the commission with the last year of quarterly audits that were done,” he said.
The issue of potentially altering race data wasn’t even on Wednesday night’s meeting agenda. The police commission plans to add it to a future agenda, in hopes of a larger discussion and to come up with an action plan.
