SAN ANTONIO — Kimiya Factory has beautifully established herself as one of the prime organizers in Texas pushing for police accountability, and it started in San Antonio around the time of George Floyd’s murder, back in 2020.
She led one of the city’s largest marches ever and she’s still fighting three years later through the Black Freedom Factory, a data-driven organization aimed at creating equality in San Antonio, to say the least.
“All I knew was the love and rage in my heart for George Floyd’s life being taken from him,” Factory said. “I also think my generation is sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
Since then, more names have been taken due to the hands of police, but Factory’s teaming up with other organizers like Ananda Tomas to get accountability through policy and unique ways like Copthedata.com, an online police discipline database which seems to have been working extremely well to say the least.
“You get an incident summary here and you can see all of the DUI for instance, who the officer was, the original discipline final discipline,” Tomas said.
Folks can also look at different firings and suspensions.
“Good interaction or bad interaction with an officer, if you want to know the next steps for a complaint,” Tomas explained.
Factory believes this tool is monumental and proactive — she said it’s going to create honest conversations about policing.
“It’s time for officers to be seen in the same light of the crime that has been committed,” Factory said
Copthedata dates back to 2010 for San Antonio police and she hopes to make this blueprint for accountability statewide.
Thomas said there’s no excuse for other departments to ignore an officer’s checkered past.
“This is public facing, and it’s accessible to everyone,” Tomas said.
Tomas and Factory believe it’s another way to honor the lives taken by police: Charles Roundtree, Antronie Scott, Marquise Jones and A.J. Hernandez.
They also believe that cop the data will save lives and let’s all hope that it really, truly does.
“Police brutality and death at the hands of police are committed by civilians who also call themselves public servants,” Factory said.
