Use of Force Reporting

Greetings Law Enforcement Partners!

The Use-of-Force and Arrest-Related Death (UFAD) data collection effort became mandatory for all agencies on January 1st, 2021.

What does this mean for agencies?

Agencies are required to transmit their UFAD reportable incidents (or a report indicating they did not have any) monthly via a TraCS form. These forms are required to be submitted by the 15th of the following month. Preliminary reports for reportable incidents can be submitted immediately, while the submission window for reports indicating there were zero incidents (zero reports) is the 1st-15th of the following month.

For example:

Your agency experiences no reportable incidents for the month of April.
- You will need to transmit a UFAD zero report sometime between the 1st and 15th of May.
Your agency experiences a reportable incident on April 5th.
- You will need to transmit a minimum of a preliminary incident report (a report that contains all presently known information on the incident, with unknown or pending values marked as “Pending Further Investigation”) on or by the 15th of May. If you transmit a preliminary incident, you are expected to return to the form and update it as soon as pending or missing information becomes available.

What are "reportable” incidents?

UFAD reports are collected when one or more of the following occurs:

An officer utilizes force that results in the death of a person
An officer utilizes force that results in the great bodily harm of a person
An officer discharges their firearm at or in the direction of a person
A person dies while detained, arrested, or in the course of being arrested

If your agency has no reportable incidents for a month, you are instead required to transmit a zero report to us via TraCS to indicate this.

What will be done with this data?

WI DOJ is statutorily required to annually publish the UFAD data we collect. Each year prior to our annual publication, we offer agencies a preview of the soon-to-be-released data from the prior year. Below you will find the dashboard containing 2021’s data that was released to the public via the WI DOJ website on 05/09/2022.

Please take the time to review the following:

If your agency is currently being covered by another agency for reporting purposes, please review the “Agencies Not Reporting” page and verify that your agency is listed there with the proper covering agency.
For reporting agencies – please review each month on the “Monthly Reporting Status” page and verify that your agency shows the reporting status you expect.
For agencies that experienced one or more reportable incidents in 2021: please review the “Reportable Incident Map” as well as the “Reportable Incident List” and verify that your incident(s) are listing the expected values.

If upon review of the above items your agency finds something that they do not expect, please reach out to us immediately so that we can work to update your records as needed.

Why is the BJIA beginning this data collection?

The BJIA is following the national trend set by the FBI. The FBI developed the National Use-of-Force Data Collection at the request of local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies. The FBI's UCR Program is empowered to collect and report information on law enforcement officers killed and assaulted, justifiable homicide, and crime data statistics. The FBI agreed to work with other organizations, including the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the law enforcement community, to gather and report data on officer-involved Use-of-Force incidents. Once the National Use-of-Force Data Collection is established, the FBI will continue coordination with these and other agencies and organizations to provide reliable, accurate, and timely information for analysis and informed conversations.

My agency has not started reporting UFAD data yet, how do we do that?

To begin UFAD reporting, your TraCS application must be updated to version 03302020 (March 30th, 2020) or better. To find out what version of TraCS you have, open the "About TraCS" page while in the application, or reach out to your agency's IT.

Once your agency has an updated version of TraCS installed, you will notice that the new UFAD form is available to you.

To begin reporting, open this form and submit the appropriate Zero report or reportable incident(s) for the prior month.

Your agency will need to send in backdated reports from January 1st, 2021 and on, as that is when reporting became mandatory.

To find out how to submit a Zero Report or file a reportable incident, check out the training materials section below.

What training materials are available?

BJIA has released a variety of training materials for the UFAD data collection, including:

The Use-of-Force and Arrest-Related Death Reporting Manual is a comprehensive manual that BJIA has released on UFAD reporting.

The Use-of-Force Decision Tree is an easy to follow tree that assists agencies in identifying if their incident is reportable or not.

The July 2020 UFAD FAQ is a PDF of all of the questions discussed in the FAQ webinar.

BJIA has also released a webinar series on how to properly report UFAD incidents. Each webinar is 5-10 minutes long and covers a specific segment of reporting:

If you have any further questions on UFAD reporting, please reach out to Mary Cebertowicz at: (608) 266-0684 cebertowiczme@doj.state.wi.us or statsanalysis@doj.state.wi.us .

Thank you for your continued support of the Wisconsin Uniform Crime Reporting program!