DHS Undercounting Use of Force Incidents, Needs to Strengthen Data Collection: GAO
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says four Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies are undercounting use of force incidents and need to do a better job at collecting data on such incidents.
GAO reviewed the use of force incidents at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Federal Protective Service (FPS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the U.S. Secret Service (Secret Service).
The review came after President Biden’s Executive Order to Advance Effective, Accountable Policing and Strengthen Public Safety required the heads of law enforcement agencies to ensure that their agencies’ use of force policies met or exceeded Department of Justice (DOJ) policy.
DHS updated its department wide policy in February to ban chokeholds unless deadly force is authorized, limit the use of no-knock entries, offer wellness resources for officers impacted by such incidents, improve data collection, and require more frequent training on the issue.
GAO Flags DHS for Undercounting
In the four agencies reviewed, GAO found that they undercounted the frequency with which officers used force against subjects, sometimes counting multiple uses of force as a single incident.
“We found the data were not sufficiently reliable for the purposes of describing the number of times agency law enforcement officers used force,” GAO wrote in the report.
For example, GAO says CBP reported the use of force on a group of 62 subjects as a single use-of-force incident and the Federal Protective Service counted 27 separate uses of force across 15 reports as a single incident.
The report flagged DHS for not providing guidance on how agencies should submit data, particularly when force is applied multiple times. GAO wrote, “By providing such guidance, DHS would be in a better position to collect consistent and complete department-wide data on its law enforcement officers’ uses of force.”
DHS was also flagged for not developing a plan to analyze use of force data, which would enable the department to “more effectively assess use of force activities, revise policies and training, and take other corrective actions.”
GAO made two recommendations to fix both issues, which DHS has concurred with.