The New Mexico Compass is creating a searchable, interactive database of public records related to fatal police shootings in Albuquerque—and it’s asking for your help.
The nonprofit news outlet, staffed by volunteers, has launched an Indiegogo campaign to crowdfund the database’s development and to support reporting based on records the outlet has obtained. A portion of the funds will go toward building an operating budget, too.
The Compass’ big goal is to be a local-news model for transparency in data gathering and storytelling. At ground level, it wants to enable community members, policymakers, and journalists to examine what the US Department of Justice in April called a “culture of aggression” within the Albuquerque Police Department.
“The [DOJ] report was galvanizing,” said Marisa Demarco, editor of the Compass. “It forced people, all kinds of stakeholders, to begin taking notice of what was going on around them.”
The DOJ said it had “reasonable cause to believe that [the city police department] engages in a pattern or practice … of excessive force, including deadly force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment” and federal law.
And the problems don’t end there. “One of the most troubling issues suggested by the DOJ report is a lack of transparency,” the Compass notes in its crowdfunding appeal. As DeMarco sees it, in the absence of complete, credible information, some news coverage has relied on guesswork of what happened in specific cases.
Against that backdrop, the Compass requested and received public records related to more than two dozen fatal police shootings since 2010. The records, the fruit of some back-and-forth with the police department, include police lapel-cam footage and belt-tape audio recordings, as well as witness interviews.
Now, with its crowdfunding campaign, the Compass hopes to make those records easily accessible for all in a searchable, interactive database. “That way, people have the chance to be more informed and make intelligent decisions regarding police-community relations here,” Demarco told CJR.
Public records, public benefit
The Compass is in good company using crowdfunding to advance an FOI cause. MuckRock has done it to investigate whether local police have abused their access to cellular data. The Freedom of the Press Foundation has done it to pay fees for access to an activist’s FBI file. The Center for Investigative Reporting has done it to fund a web platform to streamline the filing and tracking of records requests. And a number of pitches on Spot.Us, a site for crowdfunding journalism, involve FOI issues. (Disclosure: I worked in 2010-2011 as a researcher for Spot.Us and David Cohn, its founder.)
What separates the Compass project from most is its plan for the money: creating a database of records it has gathered, rather than gathering the records in the first place. To reach that goal through Indiegogo, it will need a surge soon—the month-long campaign, which ends Oct. 15, is less than 10 percent of the way toward its target of $9,375. The Compass will receive all funds raised even if the campaign doesn’t reach its target, and the lion’s share will be used to hire a database developer.
“We thought crowdfunding made sense because there’s a public benefit to the project, and people seem interested in it,” Demarco told CJR. “Plus, we want to get this off the ground as soon as possible, and other sources of funding, like grants from foundations, typically take a while.”
Demarco said she hopes the database will take its cues from ProPublica’s Dollars for Docs project, EveryBlock’s Chicago crime section, and Homicide Watch—all of which operate as comprehensive public resources that journalists and others can use to learn and write about the issues to which each group is dedicated.
“Those are successful projects with searchable databases, and they’ve proven useful for a lot of stories,” Demarco said. “That’s what we’re hoping to create, something that can be used by many to tell the story of policing in Albuquerque.”
And, of course, the Compass will use the database, too. Demarco has met with victims’ families and police officers, and the outlet has begun developing big-picture pieces exploring systemic issues like mental health and poverty, and their relationship to crime and policing. The database will help Demarco and her staff use the records to add context and detail to their reporting.
“It’s tough to pin down exactly how many stories will come out of this, but I’m sure it will be more than 100 in the course of a year,” she said. “This is very important to us, and we hope others who find it important will join us—to understand the issues around the use of deadly force.”
Jonathan Peters is CJR’s press freedom correspondent. He is a media law professor at the University of Georgia, with posts in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and the School of Law. Peters has blogged on free expression for the Harvard Law & Policy Review, and he has written for Esquire, The Atlantic, Sports Illustrated, Slate, The Nation, Wired, and PBS. Follow him on Twitter @jonathanwpeters.