When Jim Kenney was elected mayor, he recognized the lack of trust between communities and their police, in a city with massive over-policing and prosecution of Black and Brown people. So in 2017, he followed the lead of other major cities like Chicago and New York, and signed an executive order mandating that data on police complaints would be published online every month - instead of just available to see in person at the Internal Affairs Bureau of the police department.

But news outlet Billy Penn is reporting that the Mayor has moved to remove “grim or embarrassing” reports from the database, and that the database will now strip all identifying information about the offending police from the records, making it all but impossible for neighbors to know what cops are acting out - and for watchdogs and journalists to tell the story of police brutality in Philadelphia.

Briggs and Marin provided a harrowing example of the differences between the reports after their whitewashing - a Black man run off his bicycle by plainclothes cops in an unmarked car, then handcuffed and detained for hours before receiving medical treatment. The original report in the database read:

The complainant, TW, 36/B/M, states that he was physically abused by Officers W and G, 17th District. According to the complainant, on 5-24-15, at 10:10 PM, he was riding his bicycle near 20th & Wharton Streets when someone called to him from a car. He continued riding his bicycle and was struck him from behind by the vehicle. The complainant was knocked from the bicycle to the ground. He was then handcuffed and searched by the occupants of the vehicle before being transported to the hospital for treatment by two uniformed officers. The complainant maintains he did not know the operators of the vehicle that knocked him from his bicycle were plainclothes officers. He maintains they did not identify themselves to him as police officers, nor was he arrested or charged with a crime in connection with this incident.

But after the whitewashing, the complaint looks like this:

According to the complainant, on 5-24-15 at 10:10pm, they were physically abused by officers assigned to the 17th District.

Summary reports of alleged police abuse in Chicago are far more detailed than either style of report we have in Philly, with reports sorted into categories for analysis by watchdogs, press, and the public. But in Kenney’s new version of summary reports for Philly, we don’t have anything: the initials of the officers, the race of the person the police allegedly knocked off his bike, or any details of the brutal story that lets us even try to hold police accountable.  

In a city where at least 300 police officers were shown to be putting racist, violent, and homophobic content onto their personal social media feeds, we need more public accountability for police and their behavior to Black, Brown, queer, immigrant, and poor people, not less.