Connecticut law requires all police departments to keep track of any incident where an employee uses "physical force that is likely to cause serious physical injury."
Use of Force
Connecticut law requires all police departments to keep track of any incident where an employee uses "physical force that is likely to cause serious physical injury." Among other things, this includes when police strike someone, put someone in a chokehold that restricts breathing, use pepper spray, use tasers, and "discharge[] a firearm." While police departments have been responsible for reporting this information for a few years – and for tasers, since 2015 – the state has only just begun to standardize the process for doing so. As data comes in, Flashlight will centralize and publish the information in a way that’s easy to use, so that all people can understand where, when, and how police use force, as well as whom they use it against (with privacy protections to shield the identities of victims and bystanders of police violence).