After years of community calls for greater transparency on police use-of-force incidents, Boulder officials have launched a public dashboard tracking when and how officers use force.
The city defines use of force as any “physical strike, physical contact with an object or tool, or any significant physical contact that restricts the movement of a person.” It also includes the display of a firearm or Taser and the use of pepper spray.
Since 2021, when certain data collection began, Boulder police have used force in about 6% to 9% of arrests, according to the dashboard. Most incidents involved displaying a firearm or Taser, or using physical force such as a “takedown.”
Officers drew their guns at least 239 times in 2024 — an increase from 2020, when the city implemented a new use-of-force policy aimed at de-escalation, according to a previous city report.
City officers did not shoot anyone last year. But in 2023, city police shot and killed two people. One was an armed man, and the other was a woman holding what was later determined to be a replica handgun.
Police Chief Steve Redfearn said releasing the data is part of the department’s Reimagining Policing Plan to increase transparency.
“We want our community to have a clear picture of what we do and how we do it, and using data is key to this,” Redfearn said in a police department post on X.
The data suggests Black people experience use of force at more than twice the rate of white people, relative to Colorado’s demographics. Latino people also appear to face use of force at disproportionately high rates, though to a lesser extent. However, because the dashboard does not include any residency information, it is unclear how these rates compare to city, county or state population profiles.
The dashboard does not include information on whether a person was homeless or the names of the officers involved in use-of-force incidents.
The dashboard also shows arrests have risen over the past three years, even as reports of crimes have fluctuated. Property crimes, such as theft from vehicles, have declined since spiking during the pandemic. Meanwhile, reports of violent crimes like assault rose from 2022 to 2023 before leveling off slightly in 2024, according to data from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Lisa Sweeney-Miran, a member of the Boulder Progressives and former member of the city’s Police Oversight Panel, called the increase in arrests troubling, particularly given last year’s drop in reports of certain crimes.
“When we see serious crime declining, and arrests increasing, we know that the bulk of these arrests are occurring in situations involving mental health crises and crimes of poverty,” Sweeney-Miran, who runs a homeless shelter in Boulder, said in a news release. Sweeney-Miran is currently suing the city over her removal from the Police Oversight Panel.
The rise in arrests also comes as the number of officers in Boulder has increased. The Boulder Police Department said it recently reached full staffing — about 190 sworn officers — after years of recruitment challenges following the 2020 protests over police use of force.
Soledad Diaz, co-chair of the city’s Police Oversight Panel, said the dashboard is a step toward greater transparency. The panel has long advocated for the city to publish this data, and both the City Manager’s Office and the Boulder Police Department were willing, she said.
“I think it is important that we have a dashboard addressing some of the concerns that we have shared for a long time,” she told Boulder Reporting Lab. “We will learn more. The panel and myself have a bunch of questions regarding how the data is presented and collected.”
She said the panel plans to meet with police department officials to discuss the data at an April 7 meeting.