On January 22, 2026, the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) co-sponsored an event to highlight the progress and impact of the California Law Enforcement Accountability Network (CLEAN) initiative, drawing a large crowd of East Bay community members, CLEAN project partners, and leaders of organizations advocating for more transparency and justice in policing. The guest speakers and panel included Cat Brooks, Uncle Bobby X,Jack Glaser, Amanda Majail-Blanco, and Galen Mancino, moderated by trina reynolds tyler. They discussed the development of the California Police Records Access Project, a database that compiles police misconduct and use-of-force incident records across the state in one public, searchable location.
The development of this database was possible with the passage of California Senate Bill No. 1421 in 2018 and expanded by the passage of Senate Bill No. 16 in 2021, which stated that the public now has the right to see police records, increasing transparency and accountability. However, gathering records was not that easy.
Galen Mancino, Program Manager, spoke to the difficulties of assembling this information and the creation of the database itself. As he pointed out, one of the challenges is around data accessibility. While transparency laws such as SB 1421 were being passed, news outlets reported that police departments were shredding documents they did not want to disclose to the public. Law enforcement agencies are the “only ones that have the full data.” Thus, it was critical to start collecting data as soon as transparency laws were passed. As noted by multiple speakers, availability of the records does not equal accessibility to the records.
Photo: Galen Mancino discusses the creation of the California Police Records Access Project
When creating the database, a team of journalists, journalism students, and law students led by Katey Rusch aimed to obtain any records of injury, dishonesty, sexual misconduct, and other forms of serious misconduct. Ultimately, they are dealing with “dozens of terabytes” of data - including audio, body cam footage, and PDF documents. To efficiently sift through all of this data, they leverage the use of AI, but only as a way to summarize and extract key facts, while considering data privacy as well. To ensure accuracy of the extracted information, everything still goes through a manual review process. In addition, the CLEAN project team compares files they receive from law enforcement to other sources of truth to compile a full picture of incidents.
The goal with the collection and development of the database is to bring the “narratives of people to the hands of the community.” Ultimately, they want to expand the database to include carceral system employees, and to incorporate an indicator for people to see which states and locations officers have previously worked in.
Photo: The panel discussion about storytelling and the role data plays
Finally, during the panel discussion, the speakers discussed how data and stories can support each other. Individual stories can convey meaningful experiences, but oftentimes officers have their own stories of events, making it difficult to get accountability on the individual level. Here, data can help show larger patterns of disparity or inequality, adding credibility to stories. Data can be used to illustrate and support compelling stories that can drive actionable change. Panelist Jack Glaser commented on his experience: “The event was very powerful. Data people like me can get lost in the numbers - we're looking to see if there is empirical evidence of disparate treatment at the aggregate level, and this is very important for legal and policy purposes. But we can lose sight of the human toll, and the individual stories, even if they face a steep climb to prevail in court, help to motivate us all to keep pursuing justice.”
The conversation highlighted the importance of collaboration and the ways that data can be used for social impact. New tools that make data accessible and transparent can empower people, from individuals to journalists to lawyers, and act as a catalyst for systemic change.
Special thanks to the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), a CLEAN partner, for recording the event. For an additional perspective of the event from Tarak Shah, CLEAN partnerships manager and Data Scientist at HRDAG, read more here
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