Berkley, California – A groundbreaking public database launched Monday gives Californians unprecedented access to police misconduct records, marking a milestone in law enforcement transparency. The Police Records Access Project—developed by UC Berkeley and Stanford University—features approximately 1.5 million pages of internal affairs documents and use-of-force reports from nearly 700 agencies across the state.
The searchable archive includes records from more than 12,000 individual cases and is being jointly published by CalMatters, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and KQED. It is the first database of its kind in the United States and is designed to serve a wide range of users, from public defenders and journalists to researchers and bereaved families seeking answers.
“This living database makes the transparency and accountability aims of Senate Bill 1421 a reality,” said Tiffany Bailey of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, one of the project’s key contributors. That 2018 law, along with SB 16 in 2021, opened certain police records to the public—but access often required navigating a time-consuming and inconsistent request process. Until now, records could only be obtained by filing individual public records requests with local agencies…