My project is will focus on the 33,358 records of Propublica.org published NYPD complaint records between 1994-2020. I wanted to see if NYPD officers were being held accountable after receiving substantiated allegations of misconduct. The data set can be downloaded on the website https://www.propublica.org/datastore/dataset/civilian-complaints-against-new-york-city-police-officers or you can download this repository.
From the ProPublica website:
After New York state repealed the statute that kept police disciplinary records secret, known as 50-a, ProPublica filed a record request with New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates complaints by the public about NYPD officers. The board provided us with records about closed cases for every police officer still on the force as of late June 2020 who had at least one substantiated allegation against them. The records span decades, from September 1985 to January 2020.
We chose to include the basic information disclosed by the CCRB about allegations that investigators deemed unsubstantiated. Unsubstantiated means the CCRB, which has limited investigative powers, was not able to confirm that the alleged incident happened and that it violated the NYPD’s rules.
We also chose to include cases where an investigator found that what a civilian alleged did happen but the conduct was allowed by the NYPD’s rules. The Police Department’s guidelines often give officers substantial discretion, particularly around the use of force. Those cases are classified as “exonerated.”
Each record in the data lists the name, rank, shield number, and precinct of each officer as of today and at the time of the incident; the age, race, and gender of the complainant and the officer; a category describing the alleged misconduct; and whether the CCRB concluded the officers’ conduct violated NYPD rules.
All this information can help readers examine the records of officers who have been the subject of a pattern of complaints.
- Analyze the number of complaints per each mayor’s reign
- Which NYPD precinct has the most complaints?
- What are the most common types of complaints in the worst-performing NYPD precinct?
- Were there any career repercussions (demotion) for having a substantiated complaint?
- Remove duplicates or records with missing or mismatched values.
- Removing unnecessary columns.
- Replacing certain null values with appropriate zero values.
- Created new columns for better analysis.
- Creating functions to help label data.
- Creating Visualizations.
- Name: Christian Rios-Chambi
- Email: crioschambi@gmail.com
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christian-rios-chambi/
- Github: github.com/criosch1
- Website crioschambi.com