Very similar things happen when investigating criminal cases. There's possibly hundreds or thousands of instances of some type of misconduct or improper arrest... but none of the defense attorneys with those sorts of cases will talk about it with the press because of the very real potential harms of talking with the press. Or the ones that do talk are too high level.. or they might have some ulterior motive like self-promotion. It's really hard to express how many issues are a direct result of lawyers understandably, but systematically not raising any public awareness about truly awful things.
Have you tried getting your data through CPRA requests? I'm out in Illinois and our law is pretty decent and not super familiar with CA's public records nuance, but it's really worth a try. What I know though is that California CPRA officers get away with a strange amount of abuse of the law. But even with that, you might be surprised what records are available. So if you do submit some requests, don't exactly expect it to be easy or immediate. Expect to be stonewalled, and need to sue at some point though. But IME public record suits are pretty hands-off (except when they're not..). And most of the lawyers I've worked with are upfront about what they will and won't litigate over.
One thing you'll find is that.. basically nobody is looking into most of the awful things you'd expect would have eyes. It's very likely you'll be the only one doing those requests, or incrementally identifying how to get what you want through multiple requests over months. But each step breaks new ground and turns into feedback loops if you can build a community around it.
Very similar things happen when investigating criminal cases. There's possibly hundreds or thousands of instances of some type of misconduct or improper arrest... but none of the defense attorneys with those sorts of cases will talk about it with the press because of the very real potential harms of talking with the press. Or the ones that do talk are too high level.. or they might have some ulterior motive like self-promotion. It's really hard to express how many issues are a direct result of lawyers understandably, but systematically not raising any public awareness about truly awful things.
Have you tried getting your data through CPRA requests? I'm out in Illinois and our law is pretty decent and not super familiar with CA's public records nuance, but it's really worth a try. What I know though is that California CPRA officers get away with a strange amount of abuse of the law. But even with that, you might be surprised what records are available. So if you do submit some requests, don't exactly expect it to be easy or immediate. Expect to be stonewalled, and need to sue at some point though. But IME public record suits are pretty hands-off (except when they're not..). And most of the lawyers I've worked with are upfront about what they will and won't litigate over.
One thing you'll find is that.. basically nobody is looking into most of the awful things you'd expect would have eyes. It's very likely you'll be the only one doing those requests, or incrementally identifying how to get what you want through multiple requests over months. But each step breaks new ground and turns into feedback loops if you can build a community around it.