In just a few clicks of your keyboard, you can be on your way to knowing more about how your police department uses, abuses, and wastes taxpayer funding and trust.

On June 5, MuckRock began an Assignment to help begin to better understand how use of force policies and data are being tracked by local law enforcement agencies. We’ve had nearly 100 submissions from all over the country, but you can still add yours.

The Justice in Policing Act, meant to help address oversight issues in local policing nationwide, could also help provide some needed accountability for federal law enforcement in situations like those currently in Portland and Chicago.

As the national COVID-19 death toll passes the official 150,000 mark, the country is staring down the possibility of a second round of shutdowns. Major U.S. cities, however, have another challenger they’re preparing to confront: federal agents sent to subdue the residents in the streets challenging racism and police brutality. FOIA can help better understand the government’s crackdown.

The DocumentCloud Beta has a new document viewer. Internally nicknamed “scrolly zoomy,” this new viewer mimics modern PDF viewers: With a simple pinch on laptop trackpads and mobile devices, a document can now be zoomed smoothly. Plus, the triumphant return of page notes.

As part of our ongoing COVID Public Info collaboration, we’re hosting a free webinar this Thursday at 3 p.m. Eastern detailing how to read local medical examiner data. RSVP today and register for future updates.

In defending his agency, the acting deputy head of Homeland Security insisted every police department in America uses unmarked cars. File a request in your community to find out how many they have and how they use them.

This week we have more updates on policing transparency — and the lack thereof — as well as the unusual inspiration for a very hot FOIA tip. Read on for all of our FOIA updates.

For months, governors across the country have put in requests for more protective equipment for healthcare and other frontline workers. Despite federal assurances that equipment shortages were in a better place, many orders remain unfilled.

Since June, more than 500 MuckRock readers have nominated their local police agencies for public records requests seeking data on the restitution paid to settle misconduct lawsuits. The data begins to provide some insight into how police misconduct has been handled so far in a particular agency and in what cases misconduct is substantiated or compensated when challenged.

As part of our ongoing COVID Public Info training series, we’re excited to host Julia Raifman and Kristen Nocka to discuss their work and findings from COVID-19 US state policy database (CUSP), a project to obtain and analyze as many state-wide emergency orders and mandates as possible. Here are resources referenced during the discussion, as well as ways to get future updates from COVID Public Info.

States’ reopenings have largely been a sort of experiment, one that many now need to adjust as cases and deaths from the deadly virus continue to rise. Check out our newest training and the highlights from FOIA news this week.

Improving the speed and helpfulness of our customer support operations has been a major priority over the past year. We’ve cut down the average time-to-response by about 75 percent, but we know we can still do better. To help with that, we’re moving our support software to Zendesk, so you might see some minor changes in the coming weeks.

Do mask mandates matter? Were governments that shut down schools sooner making the right call? Julia Raifman, assistant professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health, has been organizing the COVID-19 US state policy database (CUSP) to collect and analyze state-wide mandates from across the country to help answer these questions and inform future policy. This Thursday, she shares what she’s learned in a question and answer session with Garance Burke.

Nationwide, there have been horrific instances of police force that avoid prosecution despite appearing closer to abuse or even murder rather than law enforcement. How is that allowed? We’ll help you find out.

Today, MuckRock’s Beryl Lipton and Open the Government’s Freddy Martinez will be featured in a training session hosted by the Project on Government Oversight. In coordination with that event, we’ve compiled some fast thoughts on how federal oversight and resources can complement local and state research and policy developments.

Despite COVID-19’s disappearance for a few weeks from the top headline spot, the virus is still very much among us. Here’s the story public records helped tell even as public attention shifted.

Over the course of the next week, a few brave newsrooms are getting upgraded to the new DocumentCloud platform, which offers a variety of improvements from speed and search to mobile-friendly annotations. Here’s how to cut to the front of the line or ask for a delay.

On June 26, we held our first COVID Public Info training, giving journalists, researchers, and everyone else tips, tricks, and templates for using transparency laws to dig into public records. We covered ground like how to adjust your approach as governments still operate at reduced capacity, as well as called out some specific stories that used transparency to dig into key issues.

Over 500 volunteers have sent in suggestions to our MuckRock Assignment asking to submit local police departments as candidates for more transparency around the money spent by police departments to settle or battle lawsuits.

At least 12 New York state police departments claim to have no records of officer misconduct from the past 50 years, according to responses to Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests.