Assertion Not publicly verifiable AI assessment confidence: 85% certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Washington D.C. estimates 20% to 40% of police records are duplicates

EJ Bensing · Scott Crouch and EJ Bensing, Mark43 // Reimagining Police Software (Hosted by FirstMark Capital) · Apr 20, 2015 · at 8:55

EJ Bensing, software engineer at Mark43, discusses data quality challenges in municipal law enforcement databases.

0:00 / 0:09exact quote · 9.7s

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“With Washington, D.C., we, ah, see about five million people records in that data set. And of those five million, they estimate between 20 and 40% are duplicates.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Washington, D.C. estimates that between 20% and 40% of the approximately five million person records in its police dataset are duplicates.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

The claim asserts that Washington, D.C. estimated 20% to 40% of the approximately 5 million person records in its police dataset were duplicates. While Mark43 was hired by the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department in 2015 to upgrade its Records Management System, no public government audits, Inspector General reports, or official District disclosures document or corroborate this specific internal estimate. Because non-public internal estimates provided to vendors cannot be confirmed or disproved through public government records, the claim cannot be resolved.

D.C. Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reports from 2015 through 2026 examine MPD records management but do not cite a 20% to 40% duplicate rate across 5 million person records.
Office of the District of Columbia Auditor (ODCA) reports evaluated MPD call and incident data, finding ~1.8% to 2% duplicate call entries, but contain no reference to 5 million person records or a 20%-40% duplicate rate.
No official District government audit or procurement disclosure corroborates the specific estimate.

Checked against

[1] rm-dash-r.com [2] cityofpacificgrove.org [3] washingtonpost.com [4] dailyjournal.net [5] washingtonexaminer.com [6] dcauditor.org [7] dcauditor.org [8] ixda.org

Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department database records duplicate rate Washington DC police records 5 million duplicate records audit Inspector General "EJ Bensing" "Mark43" "Washington, D.C." police records system contract 2015 OR 2016 "20%" "40%" "duplicates" "police" "Washington" OR "D.C." "Office of the District of Columbia Auditor" "Metropolitan Police Department" "duplicate" OR "duplicates" OR "person records" "Mark43" "Washington" OR "DC" OR "MPD" "duplicate" OR "duplicates" OR "five million" OR "5 million"

assessed as of 2026-07-31

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

Mentioned

Washington, D.C.

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Assertion Not checkable as stated

Bensing: Police departments average 10 to 15 separate record systems

“Each department we go into, we see, you know, 10 to 15 different systems that can each have their own record of a person.”

EJ Bensing Apr 20, 2015 ▶ 9:57 Scott Crouch and EJ Bensing, Mark43 // Reimagining Police Software (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)

Assertion Contradicted

Mark43 cannot legally auto-merge police records due to audit trail requirements

“Legally we as Mark 43 cannot merge those records ourselves. We have to allow a law enforcement official to do that because each piece of data entered into the system must have an audit trail that can track back to them so that this can go to court.”

EJ Bensing Apr 20, 2015 ▶ 10:13 Scott Crouch and EJ Bensing, Mark43 // Reimagining Police Software (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)

Assertion Supported

Bensing: 87% of Americans are identifiable by birth date, gender, location

“87% of Americans can be uniquely identified with date of birth, gender, and location.”

EJ Bensing Apr 20, 2015 ▶ 10:51 Scott Crouch and EJ Bensing, Mark43 // Reimagining Police Software (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)

Washington D.C. estimates 20% to 40% of police records are duplicates

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