ACLU releases new digital tool to access La. policing data

By Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer

Do you want to know how many use of force allegations were reported against a police department, how many female officers a sheriff’s office employs, or how many people experiencing symptoms of mental illness were killed by police?

Wonder no longer.

“Policing in Louisiana, By the Facts,” a new online tool created by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana, takes existing public data and “literally puts facts at fingertips,” said Elijah Appelson, data analyst and project lead for the ACLU of Louisiana. “We hope to increase public accessibility and discourse around policing in Louisiana, and help people communicate about law enforcement agencies in data-driven ways.”

Covering every police department (including university and state police) along with every judicial district, sheriff’s, district attorney’s, constable’s and U.S. Marshals office across Louisiana, users can select from about 55 different questions – accessing 120,000 data points to learn more about the question, agency and year of their choosing. The info can then be easily shared and downloaded.

“For far too long, data on police violence has been difficult to access, analyze, or even act upon,” Alanah Odoms, executive director of ACLU of Louisiana, said in a news release. “This easily digestible tool is a critical step towards the level of transparency and accountability Louisiana residents deserve. Now, communities, members of the media, advocates, and policymakers from all over have a powerful resource to not only expose patterns of abuse from law enforcement but, most importantly, demand meaningful change from those sworn to protect and serve all people.”

It’s one of, if not the only, databases of its kind in the country, focusing on Louisiana as a state where police killings and police misconduct are “drastically overrepresented,” Appelson said.

The data is collected from the Louisiana Law Enforcement and Accountability Database, Mapping Police Violence and the FBI Crime Explorer Law Enforcement Personnel Data.

The new tool was built upon the ACLU’s Visualizing Police Violence in Louisiana dashboard released last year, which Appelson describes as “a really good high-level overview of policing in Louisiana.”

That foundational website provides an immense amount of regularly-updated data from across the state, as well as personal stories and descriptions of cases being litigated.

It draws out larger statistics, such as “There are no known criminal charges associated with 95 percent of police killings in Louisiana,” “Over 34 percent of people killed by police in Louisiana were not allegedly armed,” and “The rate of Black individuals killed by police in Louisiana is more than 2.67 times that of White individuals.”

However, as Appelson received calls from people looking for very specific questions about specific law enforcement agencies, he decided to take the same data and present it in a different format – all towards the goals of “facilitating more data-driven discussions” and the Louisiana ACLU’s broader mission of “supporting people experiencing policing and immigration violence.”

Appelson noted while cities often get more focus, policing issues exist throughout the state and data from more rural parishes is just as important and can be even harder to access.

People from 50 parishes across Louisiana have reached out to the ACLU with reports of misconduct, he said. A link on the website allows people to report their own stories to the ACLU, with all submissions kept anonymous.

Those personal experiences are a very important piece of the data collection and how the ACLU pursues advocacy and litigation for victims of police violence or misconduct, Appelson said. Inherently, “It’s extremely hard to collect good police data,” he said. “The police data is only as good as the police keep it.”

There will be inaccuracies and limitations in collection, he acknowledged.

But the data presented is the best data available, he said, most of it provided by the law enforcement agencies themselves.

The New Orleans Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on the new ACLU tool.

Once the NOPD ends their 2013 consent decree agreement with the federal government mandating certain information gathering and recording – data collection will likely get even harder, he noted.

The ACLU is working on another data release project covering both people being picked up and detained by ICE, and the more than 50,000 people being held in ICE detention centers located in Louisiana. The effort also will increase transparency on the 287(g) agreements that allow local police to act as immigration enforcement agents, Appelson described.

Emphasizing the goals of accessibility and accountability, Appelson notes the ACLU doesn’t benefit financially or otherwise from the new online tool. “The only reason it exists is because we want people to have the information.”

This article originally published in the August 4, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.