As a result, there's an effort underway to make information from the San Francisco Police Department more comprehensible, officials said.
"It shows you a bunch of information, but it doesn't really tell you what that information means," said Kat Scoggin from the city controller's office, which contributed to the audit.
"Nothing's really internal anymore, especially when we're looking at law enforcement," Scoggin said. "So keeping that in mind, with this being available to the public, the public needs to be considered an audience for it, and it's just not understandable by someone who is not within the department."
It's not just laypeople that struggle to interpret the data, said SFPD Police Commissioner Petra DeJesus.
The system shows that officers are flagged for use of force, but according to DeJesus, it doesn't clearly indicate what actions the department took in response to cops who used their weapons.
So, when police leaders and the public see that information, it doesn't look good.
"We have a lot of officers now being triggered because of the use of force, so you have 300 triggers, and you have zero intervention, or maybe one," DeJesus said. "It's just a data dump. It's just numbers, and I can't read this. Even though I work with them, I'm very confused."
Chief of Police Bill Scott pointed out the information is really only supposed to be interpreted internally, but getting input is always a good thing.