As part of my Data Visualization Theory class that I recently finished at the University of Washington, we have been encouraged to explore the visualizations being made by data science experts who have blogs online. I found this very interesting article on a blog called I Quant NY run by a researcher named Ben Wellington. In this article, he uses a dataset called ClaimStat from the New York City Comptrollers office to visualize the data around lawsuits filed against the New York Police Department, based on abusive behavior from police officers. The sheer amount of data compiled on this phenomenon makes it abundantly clear that the abuse of authority is not a bunch of isolated incidents, especially when an average of ten lawsuits a day were filed against the NYPD in 2013. The visualizations show most of the claims of abuse are coming from the Bronx, where 2.79 lawsuits exist for every 1000 Bronx residents. To be clear, this data only represents situations where citizens came forward with a complaint that ended up having a representation in the legal process and registered by the NYC Comptroller. It doesnt indicate guilt on part of the officers being complained about. However, 3800 incidents in one year in just one city doesnt seem like a set of isolated incidents to me. Data doesnt lie and I am glad someone is out there to visualize it for us to give us some level of quantitative data-driven analysis.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 22:46:02 +0000
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