Agency Roles and Responsibilities
Washington State Data Exchange for Public Safety
WADEPS is the state-appointed data custodian for statewide police use-of-force reporting requirements established by Chapter 10.118 of the Revised Code of Washington (RCW).
In addition to providing law enforcement agencies across Washington with an efficient, no-cost, standardized and centralized data collection process, the WADEPS website will include online tools to view, share, and analyze information about use-of-force incidents in a variety of contexts and at the agency, city, county, and state level.
In addition to providing law enforcement agencies across Washington with an efficient, no-cost, standardized and centralized data collection process, the WADEPS website will include online tools to view, share, and analyze information about use-of-force incidents in a variety of contexts and at the agency, city, county, and state level.
Commitment to Privacy
WADEPS research-based data protocols maintain confidentiality of personally identifiable information when incident data is displayed on the public dashboards or included in data downloads: officer names, badge numbers, and criminal justice training student IDs, as well as the unique identifier for the incident, and the physical address of the incident are de-identified. No personally identifiable information about subjects or community members is collected.
Confidential WADEPS ID
After an agency has returned the general data use agreement, active commissioned officers will receive instructions via their official agency email address to activate their unique WADEPS ID number. This number is a confidential data link to officer demographic information mirrored from CJTC.
WADEPS ID numbers will be known only to the individual officer. WADEPS uses established research-based privacy protocols and modern account security tools to de-identify personally identifiable information and to reduce duplicate data entry.
General Data Use Agreement
The WADEPS general data use agreement (DUA) governs how data provided to the system is shared, used, and made available to the public, and ensures submitted data mirrors data held independently by participating agencies and their respective dispatch centers.
As part of the onboarding process, agencies will be asked to review and return the data use agreement before providing data to WADEPS.
As part of the onboarding process, agencies will be asked to review and return the data use agreement before providing data to WADEPS.
About CAD Data
Several of the required use-of-force incident-based data points, such as the incident number, call type, and location, are automatically stored in computer-aided dispatch (CAD) data held by public safety answering points (PSAPs) or dispatch centers.
The DUA includes a rider enabling agencies to authorize their respective PSAP or dispatch center to share the agency’s incident-level CAD data with WADEPS. This will improve data integrity and reduce duplicative data entry efforts for use-of-force incident reporting, and enable the efficient sharing of contextual CAD data on all calls for service to generate rate of force metrics.
The DUA includes a rider enabling agencies to authorize their respective PSAP or dispatch center to share the agency’s incident-level CAD data with WADEPS. This will improve data integrity and reduce duplicative data entry efforts for use-of-force incident reporting, and enable the efficient sharing of contextual CAD data on all calls for service to generate rate of force metrics.
Training
Both online and written training resources will be available for officers and agency administrators. The two online courses will be hosted by CJTC and will be available to active personnel alongside their regular agency-required coursework. Officers who complete the first course can receive 1.5 hours toward their annual in-service requirement.
The Data and the Dashboard
Learn about the required data elements, how WADEPS brings the data together, and educational support and resources to increase statistical understanding.