A Field Interview Card or FI card is a card that is filled out by police on the street (or “in the field”) during a stop, or after stopping a person. Filling out a new FI card with a person’s information may also be the reason for a stop. People do not have to have committed a crime to have an FI card filled out about them.
An LAPD Field Interview Card. This version has been utilized from 2021 to present day.
FI cards are a way police track a person’s movements and relationships. The cards capture such data as name, address, social security number, email address, physical characteristics, gang affiliations, date, time, location, who a person was with, what they were wearing, the presence of tattoos and other identifying marks, a person’s social media handles (see Social media surveillance), and other details. That data is then entered into a police database. As the stops are geo-coded, they can also be used by police to map a person’s movements and “predict” where a person may be found by police.
In the US, information from FI cards are added to databases nationwide, most often labeled “gang intelligence” or “gang tracking” databases, with such names as “GangNet.” In California, the central gang intelligence database CalGang is fed information primarily from police FI cards, gathered during police stops, or “stop and frisks.”
Over the years FI cards have transitioned from being physical, double-sided index cards that have to be entered into a database, to being electronic reports entered directly into a database via a tablet or other device.
<aside> <img src="/icons/postcard_red.svg" alt="/icons/postcard_red.svg" width="40px" /> FI cards continue to be used by LAPD and police departments nationwide to gather information on people, their movements, their social relationships, and to track changes to identifying marks including tattoos.
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