This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, April 20th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How Policing is done in America ought to change,

but almost any change that doesn't bring benefits to police, police departments, and

police unions, faces vigorous opposition.

Norm Stamper, former Seattle Police Chief, is author of the new book to protect and serve out of fix America's

police. We spoke last week. When the federal government collects data on how

police do their jobs, they can't really demand certain reporting of information

from police agencies. They can kind of information on police

on police involved shootings, on trying to delineate what kinds, what was the nature of the engagement between

a suspect and the police.

Where do you come down on that?

Well, I would say that the federal government can,

under court order, obviously accomplish that purpose of getting data from local law enforcement.

But it's not a matter of policy that it's just broadly reported.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

And given that there are 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the country and that policies

and procedures vary widely from one jurisdiction to the next, you'll find some that are very

willing to cooperate with the government,

they understand the value of having data that can inform policy decisions.

But many don't and some don't because of what might chairably be called institutionalized laziness.

I mean, it's sometimes hard work to particularly in antiquated systems to gather information that might be

...