A new city analysis is pulling back the curtain on how often Metro Nashville Police officers pull guns, flash Tasers, or put hands on people, and who is most likely to be on the receiving end. Nashville’s community review staff says routine weapon displays and “soft” empty-hand tactics are often left out of the department’s public numbers, creating blind spots that make it tougher to see patterns of disproportionate force.
The Policy Advisory Report, authored by the Nashville Community Review Board, digs into MNPD records and finds that Black and Hispanic residents, including youth, are more likely to have force used against them. Those incidents are concentrated in non-white, higher-poverty neighborhoods. The board urges MNPD to add soft empty-hand usage, firearm and Taser displays, and accidental discharges to its public Use of Force dashboard to boost transparency and accountability, according to the Nashville Community Review Board.
Key findings and community reaction
Among the headline takeaways: soft empty-hand techniques and firearm displays are used disproportionately against Black and Hispanic people, and school resource officer encounters involving force overwhelmingly involve Black youth. Executive Director Jill Fitcheard told WSMV that the board “implores” city leaders and the police chief to adopt its recommendations and follow through with audits and training.
Gaps in the public dashboard
The report flags a striking gap between the board’s counts and what appears on MNPD’s public dashboard. The department leaves out certain non-injury events, specifically “soft empty hand (no injury),” firearm displays, Taser displays and accidental discharges, from its use-of-force totals. The CRB includes an MNPD analyst’s explanation for those omissions, and the department’s public data portal shows force summaries that do not include the categories the board wants tracked, according to MNPD’s dashboard.
Why this matters now
The recommendations land as Nashville continues to wrestle with oversight and accountability following several high-profile officer-involved incidents and growing demands for clearer data. Local reporting has repeatedly shown how the definition of a “reportable” use of force shapes public understanding of policing, and outlets including WPLN have detailed the board’s push to close those gaps.
What officials say
MNPD rolled out public data dashboards in 2021 and has pointed to those tools as part of a broader transparency effort, according to a department release. The CRB’s technical recommendations, from adding checkboxes for de-escalation to randomly auditing incidents from 2022 onward, are aimed at making dashboards and early-warning systems better at flagging officers whose recorded force appears disproportionate to the level of resistance, a shift local reporters say could make oversight more actionable.
Oversight and next steps…