Open Data Policing

Open Data Policing

Search all known North Carolina traffic stops

30+ million stops

North Carolina NC

“This platform presents the information in a manner that increases the transparency of the Fayetteville Police Department and improves the community and police relationship.”

­— Harold Medlock, Fayetteville Police Chief

Locate an Officer's Career Stop and Search History

Stopped by the police? Use our “Find a Stop” feature to locate your traffic stop. Click on the associated Officer ID number to display the enforcement history of the officer who stopped you. Maryland data includes an officer’s stop, search, and contraband seizure data, broken down by race and ethnicity. North Carolina data includes these features in addition to use-of-force data (traffic stops only).

Review Departmental Enforcement Patterns

Learn more about the enforcement patterns of individual police agencies. Metrics include stops, searches, search rates, contraband seizure rates, and the likelihood of search for individual stop causes—each broken down by race and ethnicity. Click on the “Agencies” tab to review who is stopped and searched in a given jurisdiction and how enforcement patterns compare to local demographics, displayed through the most recently available census data.

Compare Enforcement Practices Among Officers and Jurisdictions

Our platform allows users—including those in police management—to easily compare enforcement patterns among individual officers and agencies, evaluate the frequency and efficiency of searches, and monitor for racially disparate enforcement practices. Police managers who possess a master list of Officer ID codes can bypass the “Find a Stop” page to directly access data on individual officers under their command.

About Open Data Policing

Open Data Policing is a first-of-its-kind platform that aims to make real the recommendation of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing to make stop, search, and use-of-force “data...publicly available to ensure transparency.” The site currently aggregates, visualizes, and publishes public records related to all known traffic stops to have occurred in North Carolina since 2002, in Maryland since 2013, and in Illinois since 2005. Data is collected in all states pursuant to mandatory data collection statutes and reported monthly to the NC State Bureau of Investigation, Maryland State Police, and Illinois State Police. The platform does not alter or manipulate raw data. Where data sets are incomplete or missing, it is because they have not been reported to the state agency from which the site derives its records. Although the site permits users to identify the career enforcement patterns of individual officers associated with known traffic stops, Open Data Policing does not have access to, nor does it publish, the names or drivers, passengers, or officers involved in traffic stops.

Donate

Open Data Policing is a project of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. To support the work of the Open Data Policing initiative, click here.