I admire the courage of the makers of this site, because as a web developer I'd be dissuaded from investing much time on this due to an expectation of high legal costs to defend against libel claims. The police are one of the most politically powerful, protected, and legally savvy groups in the country. Whether the law favors such claims or not is barely relevant to the risk of being destroyed by the cost of defending against such suits.
Legislation along the lines of anti-SLAPP laws could help, making the plaintiff pay for a failed action. But the political power of the police makes that unlikely, and if not narrowly tailored would discourage even well founded suits by plaintiffs with shallow pockets.
>"Governor Kevin Stitt today signed into law House Bill 1643, a bill that makes it crime to dox, or post personal information, of law enforcement and county officials online."
Sure, it's egregiously unconstitutional; but just as you say, I wouldn't want to be the one hiring attorneys.
~~~~~
[late edit]: To defend of my assertion of "egregiously unconsitutional", I'll quote this succinct summary of the enumerated First Amendment exceptions in United States v. Stevens [2010], as summarized in Rynearson v. Ferguson. I can't imagine how any of these could even loosely apply here; please correct my misunderstandings if you are able. (For those Googling things, be warned that Stevens is a very disturbing case).
> Over the years, the Supreme Court has enumerated certain “well-defined and narrowly limited’ classes of speech that remain unprotected by the First Amendment. See Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571-72 (1949). The unprotected speech is limited to, (a) obscenity, Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476; (b) defamation, Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U.S. 250, 254-255 (1952); (c) fraud, Virginia Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U.S. 748 (1976); (d) incitement, Brandenbury v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447-49 (1969); (e) true threats, Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705 (1969); and (f) speech integral to criminal conduct, Giboney v. Expire Storate & Ice Co., 336 U.S. 490, 498 (1949). Speech that does not fall into these exceptions remains protected. See United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. 460 (2010).
> Forget libel -- in some states, it potentially introduces criminal liability!...
> "Governor Kevin Stitt today signed into law House Bill 1643, a bill that makes it crime to dox, or post personal information, of law enforcement and county officials online."
I'm not going to try to judge how wacky that law may be, but this website definitely isn't doxxing:
1. Police officers are public employees, and often a lot of seemingly "personal information" is actually a matter of public record (e.g. salaries). The "personal information" on this website appears to be publicly available (e.g. I found this guy at random https://rateourcops.org/officer/26, it lists a phone number which Google reveals to be on his employer's website https://www.cityofalbertlea.org/contact-us/, so likely an official work number).
2. It cannot be doxxing to truthfully describe your personal experiences with a person (e.g. this cop treated me badly in this way, or I think he only did a one star job).
You are applying common sense in an area where the technical legality and limits of the law are very detailed and getting those details wrong will cost you a whole bunch of cash. I think the prior comment was strongly agreeing on the point that this would be a pretty silly lawsuit - but, much like SLAPP suits, baseless lawsuits that are bound to fail can still inflict a whole lot of pain on the receiver - and the Fraternal Order of Police (gosh they really need to update that name) has a gigantic war chest that can inflict a whole lot of pain.
We all thought what Aaron Swartz was doing was clearly not under the purview of the CFAA, but he got hounded to his death by a prosecutor over it anyways.
There's a Scott Alexander essay Against Signal Boosting as Doxxing: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/29/against-signal-boostin... . It doesn't matter what the technicalities are, spreading information wide which is technically already available can be, in practice, doxxing. Having all that information in one place drastically increases the ease of harassment.
And I don't believe for one second that only bad police officers will be harassed. There are actual criminals who'd do it. There are activists who would like to get back at cops for doing things like voting for the wrong candidate, or who just aren't good at picking the correct cop to target at all. There are teenagers who'd call the cops' landlord with complaints just for the lulz.
> Sure, it's egregiously unconstitutional; but just as you say, I wouldn't want to be the one hiring the attorneys.
How is it unconstitutional exactly? People seem to throw that term around willy-nilly. It is, however, problematic because it overreaches -- for example, being expected to blur out badge numbers or officer names is needlessly onerous for the reporter of a police encounter.
IANAL, however my understanding is that the First Amendment protects ones’ ability to record police officers in public when acting in an official capacity.
I suppose the Supreme Court will have to rule on the issue of blurring our badge numbers during the course of a protected activity.
But this does seem related to the constitution through the First Amendment.
I think it'd really depend on whether this communication was framed as being from a private organization against the public organization or against the private individual of the officer's own person. And even then it'd likely get mired in a lot of concerns about public safety.
One of the more sane elevated rights police officers have long enjoyed is the right to extreme privacy - their phone numbers and addresses are unlisted by default and sharing the private information of an officer with malicious intent carries a more serious penalty than an equivalent action against a regular individual. Police officers face an elevated level of danger in their personal lives from persons they've arrested or interacted with - if you could spin this website as providing information that makes it easier to identify and harass problematic officers (even if they deserve a significant amount of scrutiny) you'll likely have a strong case to have the site shutdown.
One of the more sane elevated rights police officers have long enjoyed is the right to extreme privacy - their phone numbers and addresses are unlisted by default and sharing the private information of an officer with malicious intent carries a more serious penalty than an equivalent action against a regular individual.
Most people these days seem to be confused about what the term "secret police" means. It doesn't mean a police forces that the public don't know exists. It means a police force that has as some of its members, people whos identities are secret. You know, like the NKVD or STASI.
I was taught as a kid 30 years ago, during the cold war, that having a secret police was a key indicator of an oppressive regime. What you describe as "sane elevated rights" was something I was taught that we needed to fight tooth and nail, possibly with nuclear weapons.
I guess times change. Sometimes I feel like crying.
Seems about as blatant of a violation of freedom of speech as one can imagine. They’re public officials. Their personal information (name, role, jurisdiction, salary, etc.) ought to be actively published by the government. To make it illegal to publish that information is just ludicrous. Heck, I used to remember when police had to literally wear a badge that publicized their name.
They're not elected, nor are they "public persons." There are plenty of regular folks working for the city, including analysts, beat cops, secretaries, and so on.
> They're not elected, nor are they "public persons." There are plenty of regular folks working for the city, including analysts, beat cops, secretaries, and so on.
As a non-elected “regular folk” kind of person working for a state government (not city, but Constitutionally there is no distinction) a lot of my employment information that would not be public (and that both I and my employer might seek to protect, or different reasons, from the public were I privately employed) is public. Not just in a theoretic sense, but actually hosted and searchable by anyone in the world in numerous databases compiled by media organizations of public data.
Working for the government, outside of where the fact or nature of that employment is itself, say, classified information, is very much a “public” thing.
Unless I am really misunderstanding the rulings on this subject, though, I believe that if you're residing in CA (or another two party consent state) you do have the ability to refuse being recorded even when executing your public duty.
Police officers get a number of special treatments that empower them with more and less rights in certain settings due to the specific nature of their job.
If they are in a public building with public access, so not in a restricted area, then recordings can be made. CA does have additional protections even in public concerning “confidential communications” which likely prohibit covert recording.
I can look up my municipality's public school teachers by name, find out their exact salaries for each year they were employed, and then use those names on any site like Rate My Professors to find their reviews.
The fact that the people who can pull you over, arrest you, kill you, etc. aren’t even elected is a totally separate issue, but perhaps one that ought to be addressed! They’re still absolutely public officials.
I think op is saying there's a difference between, for example, the Chief of Police (a public person), and an undercover police detective. I think it's unreasonable to require all government employees, from DMV janitors to CalTrans technicians, to police detectives, to have a public profile. Is there any current law that stipulates otherwise (applies to all gov employees)?
> If they're taking public money of course they should be accountable to the public.
Really? A public profile for all... military personnel. FBI, CIA, NSA employees, government contractors, employees of corporation that accepts government subsidies/grants.
Yes, unless there's some kind of security exemption then names can be anonymised. I don't think most police are doing that kind of work though?
Why do you think that's controversial? It's public money.
> government contractors, employees of corporation
The contract details should be in scope, but what the person with that contract chooses to do with that money (paying employees) is up to them and should be private.
I understand and respect your position, and think there are some merits to it, but I personally believe it's unnecessary. Typically the 'public persons' within public orgs are their senior / high-ranking officials (e.g. chief of police; director of engineering), and often are directly elected (e.g. county sheriff). If there are grievances to be had within some public sector, we as citizens can and should demand responses from the leaders of those organizations. I don't think making it easy to harass low ranking public employees is a good tradeoff for whatever is gained by requiring them to have a public profile. I think most public servants (mid/low-level employees) should be entitled to the same level of privacy as everyone else.
> not post videos of cops, which is unconstitutional
Just to be clear, you're not allowed to post videos of plenty of things (Area-51, a meeting between the Joint Chiefs, closed sessions in Congress, etc.). But you're right that you're allowed to record videos of cops in public[1]. I think the law in question is about personally-identifiable information.
It is illegal to post a whole lot of videos you might find pretty innocuous. A not insignificant portion of America has two party consent laws[1] that really restrict what you're able to record when it comes to private individuals. It has been pretty clearly decided highlighted that police do not enjoy this commonly held right[2] due to the sensitivity of their role but I really don't know if that same restriction extends to other public offices when acting in a non-public manner (i.e. the JCS) - I am really not familiar with the specific exceptions the above comment laid out so I won't comment on them... but it is illegal to post a whole bunch of different sorts of videos.
It’s illegal to record without consent in some states. Posting such a recording is problematic because it’s evidence of a crime, not a crime in and of itself. If it were, there would be cases of journalists posting transcripts from illegally recorded conversations, which isn’t happening.
IANAL either, but I'd expect anything that puts onerous restrictions on speech to be unconstitutional. Usually these "over-enthusiastic" laws don't define the restrictions in a narrow scope. It all boils down to the definition of PII in this law, for example. If it's narrowly and clearly defined it could pass the first amendment test. If it's not clear and instead has the effect of chilling speech because of that, it'll get thrown out.
I mean the Supreme Court just threw out the donor disclosure requirement in CA because it could have the effect of stifling free speech.
> because as a web developer I'd be dissuaded from investing much time on this due to an expectation of high legal costs to defend against libel claims.
Until one of the crusades to legislatively narrow or repeal Section 230 succeeds, that should be pretty complete protection against even a scintilla of a cognizable libel claim against the developer for user-submitted content.
States attempting criminalization of posting police related info are a bigger threat (while mostly blatantly federally unconstitutional, there's a significant risk of you being arrested, tried, convicted, and serving a sentence before you get that argument even taken up by a federal court.)
I suspect that Section 230 protections aren't much help if the site is specifically designed for, and actively encourages, the posting of content which is (claimed to be) illegal.
Perhaps a good example of how far such a legal theory can be pushed is the case of isoHunt, a search engine which was shut down in 2013 after being sued by the MPAA.
> The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in March ruled against isoHunt, concluding that “there is more than enough unrebutted evidence in the summary judgment record to prove Fung offered his services with the object of promoting their use to infringe copyrighted material.”
That defense would apply if Police didn't have special privileges, but they do. Many locales have attempted to make things like filming police officers in public illegal
Sure - but the harassment and problems that encounter even after judicial scrutiny is finished and resolved that the law wasn't legit doesn't stop the harassment, financial, emotional, and reputational cost that will be incurred.
Just because something doesn't hold up to judicial scrutiny doesn't stop TX from passing anti-abortion laws all the time and making it very difficult for women.
> I admire the courage of the makers of this site, because as a web developer I'd be dissuaded from investing much time on this due to an expectation of high legal costs to defend against libel claims.
Section 230 of the CDA shields operators of interactive computer services from liability for user-generated content. Interactive computer services are not liable for what users do with them.
A personal blog where you post your own content, however, could open you up to libel or SLAPP lawsuits.
Unfortunately, you probably need to add "and true" to that list, which makes the "non-deletable" requirement less clear-cut.
There is no algorithm for truth, so in practice you need a way of allowing groups to form consensus about the validity of claims relating to pieces of data in the system. A claim might be "The image with hash ABC123 is a deepfake."
It might be possible to layer a system with that amount of nuance on top of a blockchain, but you need to be really careful that your system won't end up making the world much worse before it has a chance of making it better.
Believable deep fakes, at least currently, cannot be created instantly. Blockchain guarantees whatever footage is on chain existed at the moment it was added and hasn't been tampered with since.
There are a lot of reputationally damaging images you could create for which it is not possible to determine the date when they were supposedly taken just from looking at them.
If you know that a specific cop is going to be at a specific location at a specific time, you could create the deepfake in advance and add it to the blockchain when they show up.
It doesn't inspire confidence that they don't reveal who they are - neither their About Us page nor their Contact Us has any relevant information. In a democracy, there is no reason to hide behind anonymity while fighting for a just cause. As Gandhi taught us, democracy survives only on trust and not fear and violence.
If one fears the misuse of power by the government through the judiciary, then needs to rally the politicians and political party to their cause too, and work from within the system.
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled repeatedly that anonymity is protected by the First Amendment, specifically because anonymity enables free speech. A person who does not speak because they've been cowed into silence is deprived of their rights. "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. … It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation … at the hand of an intolerant society." (McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission.)
Thanks for pointing out an interesting aspect of US constitution.
It however doesn't change what I said.
When fighting political causes, anonymity doesn't help - Gandhi or Rosa Park or Martin Luther King continue to inspire us today because they faced injustice and tyranny head on. They have provided us with an effective template to fight against injustice and assert our rights.
Fear is often the reason behind anonymity, and that doesn't bode well for any political cause. Even Gandhi, who inspired non-violent politics said that he would prefer if people chose violent politics than giving in to fear or cowardice ( https://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil8.htm ). Moreover, politics on internet is even more fraught as even foreign powers can hide behind anonymity to interfere in the politics of other nations.
I see what this is trying to do, but I'm not sure what the creators think this is going to achieve. Many if not most police interactions are going to leave someone unhappy; it is the nature of policing. Either an innocent party is confronted, a criminal is caught, or a victim does not receive justice. As we know, unhappy people are more likely to leave a review than happy ones, so if this site is actually used by people, most cops regardless of behavior will end up with poor ratings. There will also inevitably be heavy brigading whenever there is a controversy.
As these ratings have no bearing on whether police keep their jobs, whether a civilian interacts with a given cop, whether a given cop is promoted, or anything else, all this really does is serve as a platform to shit talk the police. Now, there are definitely some police who deserve to be called out for inappropriate behavior, but doing it on the internet really won't do any good.
I see what this comment is trying to do, but I'm not sure what the author thinks this comment is going to achieve. Many if not most hacker news links are going to leave someone unhappy; it is the nature of hacker news. Either a navel gazing techie is confronted, or a victim of tech myopia does not receive justice. As we know, unhappy people are more likely to leave a comment than happy ones, so if this comment is actually read by people, most people who read it, regardless of their IQ, will just dismiss it as written by someone who probably doesn't care about police accountability in any form.
As this comment will have no bearing on whether the website will have its intended effect, whether anyone uses the website, whether public records of negative interactions will spur reform, or anything else, all this comment really does is serve as a platform to shit talk the website. Now, there are definitely some websites that deserve to be called out for not achieving the effect of full scale, immediate nationwide police reform, but commenting about it on Hacker News really won't do any good.
QED. I make a post alleging how angry people are more likely to leave negative comments and reviews and immediately afterwards an angry person leaves a vitriolic comment making sweeping judgements about my character without evidence just to be a dick. Is there anything you have to say about the actual points I brought up?
This is an obnoxious response, and the situations aren't really similar as hacker news is not generally an adversarial situation the way a cop arresting someone (rightly or wrongly) is.
Yeah, another issue I see with this is if people think this has any kind of sway with the police or their departments, they will be less likely to report bad police behavior to police departments. Really, if you want to increase accountability (without policy), advertising heavy usage of police department reporting mechanisms is the best you can do (and it ain’t much).
Unfortunately, the statistics don't presently exist, so it's impossible to know, but I doubt most interaction between police and the general public is incident response and/or arrests. They work plenty of public and private crowd control and traffic control, and man more or less permanent patrols at malls, beaches, parks, and if you live near a city center, they just walk the streets. Most of the time I've personally interacted with a police officer, it's either been just happening to cross paths because I lived downtown and was going for a walk, when I worked at Disneyland since they had a dedicated unit, and Los Angeles Lakers championship parades.
None of those involved an expected naturally unhappy party.
I'm sorry, but this is not the way to enforce "good cops". You need to focus more on local surroundings that represent smaller communities, where reputation and social interactions matter. The internet is an amplification in both good and bad ways, but a large centralized way to enforce "good cops" is ripe for disaster. We need to develop tools to help stabilize small-scale communities, not cause schisms. In turn, these tools can be considered a form of public infrastructure. Maybe open-source the code so that local communities could run such a website?
Yep, a trendy restaurant in my city hired voice actors to read some of their most ridiculous bad Yelp reviews, and played the recording on loop in the bathrooms.
Well, clearly the vast majority of current initiatives to enforce "good cops" aren't working, so I hope a thousand people try a thousand other methods to increase police accountability.
Your open source cop tracker for local communities idea sounds cool. Go build it.
Saying that in reply to “We need to develop tools to help stabilize small-scale communities” reads to me like you are furiously agreeing with the underlying principle, while ignoring the substance of the argument.
Most local communities are not going to do that for reasons largely due to macro policies (which have positive effects too; eg labor mobility is harmful to local communities but well worth the cost).
Make them small and less powerful to blunt any effect and create schisms? Have a small copy run locally and use the power of gossip to shame without creating schisms?
Not sure that's going to work any better than what we don't have now.
I made something like this a while ago (CopScore), not only were there serious issues with it but it was also very ineffective. This can ONLY be done by the gov in an official capacity.
> This can ONLY be done by the gov in an official capacity.
What should citizens do when the government and official capacities are completely failing to hold police accountable?
In Seattle our Office of Police Accountability is a blind rubber stamping agency that our OIG recently reprimanded for their abysmal failures in investigating an incident with a lot of public intention.
Where does this learned helplessness come from? You can run for city council in Seattle. Or fund the candidates that you like. This is what citizens can do.
I think expecting citizens to pay if they want their government to be accountable may be at the root of this problem...
(For the record, I do fund the 3 city council members who are toughest on police accountability. And our city council is moving in the right direction on police accountability - the mayor is the biggest obstacle)
Living under a good government isn’t some naturally free good we deserve to be given; we collectively create it, and if you aren’t contributing to that, then like most people, you are freeloading on someone else’s work to make it happen.
“I vote” is better than nothing, but less than the minimum average contribution required to make it work.
> We don't require an account to submit reviews or contribute data to the site. User submissions contain no data that could be used to personally identify the submitter.
This is great from a privacy perspective, but how do they prevent false reviews?
Yelp collects personal information upon signup and they still have a fake review problem.
Going through all of the work to create the site, and providing two social media accounts and a Discord invite link without setting up privacy, verification, and anti-harassment policies seems like a choice. Creating just about everything but those things seems a lot less like negligence.
Seems like they want their 10 minutes (or maybe more than 1 month) of fame to spark the conversation of whether or not a site like this is good/legal/would work. If this service doesn't shutter at the first sign of (libel) lawsuit, I would imagine some political interest groups using it as a way of setting a precedent in their favor (on either side).
This is not Yelp for Cops, or RateMyProfessors, that is just a false comparison to justify what is almost definitely going to turn into a harassment and doxxing platform.
Yelp and online business review sites provide value on the basis that you can make educated choices, but there is no choice involved with police. You don't get to pick and choose which officers or departments are coming, and if someone calls the police on you you're not not going to be have the time or knowledge of who's being sent to search on RateOurCops before they get there. It's a fallacy.
> Yelp and online business review sites provide value on the basis that you can make educated choices, but there is no choice involved with police. You don't get to pick and choose which officers or departments are coming, and if someone calls the police on you you're not not going to be have the time or knowledge of who's being sent to search on RateOurCops before they get there. It's a fallacy.
You don't get to pick and choose your kid's public school teachers, either. You can extend this to public schools, as well. You don't choose public schools your kid goes to in the same way you don't get to choose what department in your city responds to your call. And yet Rate My Teachers exists for public school teachers[1] all the same.
You can choose where you live and decide what schools or teachers you don't want your kid being around, in the same way you can choose where you live or travel to in order to avoid certain cops or police departments entirely.
> You don't get to pick and choose your kid's public school teachers, either
Where I live you do. You can put in a request to have your child go to another school, either in your district or even out of your district. Or enroll them in private school, or charter school, or, heck, home school them.
The difference is, doing this means you as a parent are on the hook for getting your child to these schools (and in the case of home school, teaching as well).
But just because something is inconvenient doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And these options mean you can put your child where they will excel.
> But just because something is inconvenient doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And these options mean you can put your child where they will excel.
Exactly. If I don't want to live or visit somewhere where I might encounter certain police officers or departments, I have the option of making that happen. And that option means my kid won't be on the wrong side of those particular people or departments abusing their power.
Your argument is essentially that two wrongs make a right, since this other site exists then this one is fine.
RatemyTeachers has a privacy policy and at least attempts to verify people, telling viewers that despite their efforts they should take reviews with a grain of salt[1].
Also, you still have more options for schools due to private and charter schools. It's still not an equal comparison.
My argument is that 1) you can, actually, make a choice using this information 2) that the OP isn't unique or different from other review sites, that in fact the OP is along the same lines of Rate My Professors, Rate My Teachers or other review sites. I also don't believe it's wrong, but I didn't argue that.
> almost definitely going to turn into a harassment and doxxing platform.
This site only uses publicly available information. How would it enable more harassment if someone can goto www.agency.com/officers and get the same info?
The chance of these reviews turning out to be unbiased is quite literally 0%, and the chance of them being useful when determining where to live is maybe 0.1%.
You can certainly also make that choice based on information from legitimate channels. People in LA don't need to have input on police departments that they'll never run into.
I'm very aware of this practice, but once again it doesn't justify this website. It needs to be handled by the city in question. They can write their own policies and have autonomy, instead of everything coming down to online hearsay.
The government not taking the 'right' option is not an argument for the creation of this website. Having the authorities run it instead of some random people (trolls, extremists, foreign intelligence, who knows) is not the same.
You're clutching a lot pearls here, but has there been any evidence for any of this every happening? There's mountains of evidence of how bad cops are protected by the union, the government policy, and even legally (hello qualified immunity, and repeated court deference).
Given the official reticence to hold officers to even the lowest standards of professionalism, what is your alternative? Throw up our collective hands?
> You're clutching a lot pearls here, but has there been any evidence for any of this every happening?
That idiom doesn't make sense to me in this context, there's no cultural issue or whatnot. It's about seeing how unverified claims can hurt people, which you don't need a crystal ball or peer reviewed study to tell you. It's also about the burden of proof - why do I need to point to tons of instances of these kinds of sites ruining innocent people's lives, but we should all expect what's posted here to be true without 'evidence'?
> There's mountains of evidence of how bad cops are protected by the union, the government policy, and even legally (hello qualified immunity, and repeated court deference).
"The police" are not some monolithic entity, with one single union or one single government, at least in the United States which this site is obviously directed at. Different unions and departments conduct themselves differently, and a lot of them don't have these problems.
> Given the official reticence to hold officers to even the lowest standards of professionalism, what is your alternative? Throw up our collective hands?
This is another fallacy - people that see the obvious problems with unverified claims on the internet are not required to give you solutions to whatever problem the latest example website is claiming to help solve.
That being said, I can choose to answer that question as the separate topic it is. My answer is stronger hiring practices and when the rubber hits the road, federal enforcement. There are police departments that don't have these problems. Americans have civil rights and federal law enforcement is supposed to protect them, even and especially from state governments when those are violated. More money needs to be spent, and for a lot of departments they just need to wipe the force.
You say that different agencies have different policies, but do they really? I would say this is a distinction without a difference. The problems seen are endemic across police forces nationwide. If there truly was a difference and a will to reform from the agencies themselves, wouldn’t the best practices be spread and the problems eradicated? Obviously this hasn’t happened.
As for more money for police, isn’t that just rewarding bad behavior? Police are already some the largest expenditures for cities, and that’s even before you factor in all the payments for lawsuits for police misconduct. Police departments are unique in that you will find people arguing that more money needs to be spent on failing departments, whereas other government agencies, for instance schools, have their budgets cut for poor performance.
It is pearl clutching because you’re arguing that potential harm is somehow greater than the actual harm that is occurring every day. Not just occurring, but documented, publicized, and then pointed unpunished.
Just earlier this year, the 5th Circuit Court said it was reasonable for a police officer to recklessly immolate a man. You might say, it was unexpected that a cop would know that tasing a man that has doused himself in gasoline, would ignite it. But that doesn’t hold, because not only are the cops trained not use tasers around flammable liquids, BUT ANOTHER OFFICER ON SCENE said, “If we tase him, he’s going to light on fire.”
But, oh won’t someone think of the police?! Seriously. Think about the real harm, because the cops protect themselves. They act with complete impunity. And as for worrying of a cop gets dozed, let me tell you a secret. That information is already public records. There’s nothing special here than anyone else, except that you and I can’t kill someone and then say the magic words “I thought he had a gun”, and then get applauded as a hero.
”Warning: The officer approaching you has a RateOurCops rating of 1.6. Do not make any sudden movements. Use old english language and manners. Attempt to turn caucasian. Good luck.”
Assuming a 40hr/wk schedule, the average salary for police officers in the usa ($70k) works out to about $33/hr with about half making less (likely more depending on the skew in the distribution). There are job postings for usa police listing ~30k yearly salary, which comes to about $15/hr. Probably some new recruits end up in the typical situation of salaried workers and work significnatly more than 40 hours. I bet $100 could seem pretty nice.
A lot of police officers work a lot of overtime hours, for example in Oakland one officer averaged a half a million dollars per year. (1)
I’m not sure exactly what his hourly wage worked out to, but I’ll agree with the overall sentiment that somebody making that much money would not likely be swayed by $100.
I'd be wary of extrapolating from one exceptional person in the bay area to the entire country... Probably most cops aren't the single highest paid person in their municipality.
Here are more articles and studies on this topic. I didn’t extrapolate from one example, I just used one in my post (this is why I used the phrase “for example”)
I’d personally be wary of extrapolating “this webpage says that some police officers that make less money than others” to “$100 is a significant amount of money for an average cop.”
For your example you picked the highest paid officer in one of the richest areas in the state where police officers make the most money. It does seem that police in California make a ton of money, but it's really not representative of the entire country. Take a look at that Forbes link you posted.
Despite reading your articles, I still don't think $100/hr is a reasonable approximation of an average cop's hourly rate, and thats before getting into the fact that the guy making half a million for watching Warriors games is probably not the guy pulling you over.
> Despite reading your articles, I still don't think $100/hr is a reasonable approximation of an average cop's hourly rate
I’ve personally never said that police make more than $100 per hour, in fact I specifically said that despite not knowing what the hourly wage works out to, I don’t think that $100 would be a significant amount of money to most cops.
If your premise is “you can bribe anyone as long as the dollar amount is higher than the wages from one hour of work,” then I suppose it’s impossible to discuss in good faith.
My premise is “$100 isn’t usually enough to bribe people that make high five figures or more.” I’m not entirely sure why hourly wage is supposed to fit in here.
> I’m not entirely sure why hourly wage is supposed to fit in here.
Please read the original post I responded to. It explicitly mentions hourly wage which is the only reason I mentioned it at all. I thought their estimate seemed a little high.
Thank you for stating your premise, I didn't find it clear in your earlier posts. I don't have strong opinions about how much is enough to bribe someone who makes X as I am not aware of any good sources of data that deal with this question. Maybe a table of attempted bribes with metadata. I'll run some experiments and get back to you.
I’d suggest a wonderful book called The End of Policing by Alex Vitale. I’ve read it cover to cover many times and it may include some insight that you’d enjoy.
I appreciate the suggestion :) I will add it to my list.
Based on a quick glance at some synopses, it seems the author accurate identifies the role of police in society but perhaps doesn't adequately account for how society would change if the police were removed but the driving force for their existence remained in place.
I would suggest drawing your own conclusions from the book. It’s exhaustively researched and thoroughly cited, but it’s a topic that gets people worked up so I’m sure that interpretations abound.
I’m kind of curious as to what you mean by this:
> it seems the author accurate identifies the role of police in society but perhaps doesn't adequately account for how society would change if the police were removed but the driving force for their existence remained in place.
You believe that the author has a factual understanding of the current state of police, and at the same time is factually wrong about a hypothetical scenario that has never occurred in American history?
(As an aside, I’m not sure what the synopses have led you to believe Vitale is directly advocating for. It’s a very complex book with a lot of nuance. If one’s interpretation is “this is the same exact thing as a ‘defund the police’ or ‘black lives matter’ or ‘coexist’ bumper sticker” then there isn’t really much that can be done to change that opinion.)
What authors do you think are correct about a hypothetical future in which something completely unprecedented happens to American society?
If the only possible opinions to have about hypothetical events are 'factually correct' and 'factually incorrect,' I don't think you will find many good opinions.
I haven't the book and it will take me several months to get to it, so I'd appreciate if you didn't pull random concrete ideas out of my intentionally vague and non-committal statement. Why is it that the people quickest to accuse others of bad faith are the ones that do this?
$100/hr works out to about $200k/yr, maybe a little more or less depending on how much vacation you get and assuming no overtime (for convenience despite the sibling comment). Based on your data, the represents about the top percentile of police sergeant pay (not including benefits). Actually in the most recent available year only 1 out of 250 passes this threshold, with the median at around ~$85k. Unless this website is just a tool for police to hide how much they earn too?
It's a good amount of money for a blue collar job, but I think you're overselling it, especially for HN.
Why wouldn't you include benefits? Do you consider benefits when accepting a job? Would cops accept only base pay as compensation? I am paying for these benefits, and they are not, like $50/mo into your 401k benefits. They are golden-parachute, retire young, benefits. They are part of total compensation, and it would be dishonest to talk about cop pay without including them. Almost every police sergeant makes over $100k in total compensation. At least 10% make more than $200k.
I believe the person you’re responding to is only interested in take-home pay divided by hours worked and whether or not that number >=$100. I am not sure whether or not the requisite $100/hr number to become immune to bribery is pre- or post-tax.
The premise seems to be that if the police made $99/hr, you could easily get better services out of them by handing them a $100 bill, because then they’d make an extra dollar. However if they are making $100/hr, they’d become morally unassailable at that price point.
It’s a somewhat odd argument because instead of responding to a somewhat flippant comment about what it would take to have better interactions with law enforcement, we’re now arguing about hourly wages. It’s a pretty neat way to avoid addressing the actual issue at hand.
Because I'm not convinced of the reliability of benfit-to-dollar conversions, especially given their history as a way to distract from falling real wages. I personally value real salary much higher than benefit equivalent. Maybe the police department is overpaying for dental insurance from an agency run by the chief's cousin's wife.
You raise a valid point but it makes the analysis more complicated. Even given the way you run the numbers, however, I think you are still overestimating the hourly rate for the average cop. If you judge the wealth of the world by the top 10%, poverty has been eliminated.
That is a valid point but let me highlight three counter arguments: First, a large fraction of those benefits come from "overtime pay" or "other pay", and are dispersed as cash. Second, benefits typically come out of pay before taxes, so even if they aren't necessarily the best value, they are a better value than you could buy yourself. Third, most public employees in my state, as with many others, who's retirement benefits are paid into the PERS retirement system, are exempt from paying Social Security taxes.
In my first full-time job at a call center I was given a packet that described total compensation including 401k contributions, insurance etc.
There was a bigger number that included all the benefits and perks, and a smaller number that represented actual weekly take-home pay. I was able to divide the bigger number by 40 just as easily as I was able to divide the smaller number by 40.
If I were to talk to a fulltime hourly worker, I feel like they wouldn't include benefits when they tell me their hourly rate (I didn't when I was one). You make a good argument; perhaps they should. Even if the conversions are somewhat sketchy, I think this would actually be quite illuminating, especially when considering things like minimum wages. A discussion for another day.
Base salary is a fraction of what cops earn. Indeed, it is a way to hide what they actually earn. Check this out:
Deputy Jason Wood is the sort of shitty cop that I would like to avoid based on his poor ratings from interactions with my community. He can be heard in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc4iEjycDCw repeatedly urging his dog to attack a suspect who was on his knees with his hands in the air. He subsequently got a DUI https://mynews4.com/news/local/washoe-county-deputy-charged-.... Deputy Jason Wood is still a Washoe County Sheriff's deputy today, and indeed has been promoted since those incidents. We paid him $242,000 https://transparentnevada.com/salaries/2020/washoe/jason-d-w... in total compensation last year - plus we paid the guy in that video $17,500 for the mauling and beating.
He also shot a guy to death in 2014, but there was no video of that and police investigated themselves and determined that there was no wrongdoing.
If you want to do some naive math, $242k divided by 40hr/week divided by 52 weeks/year is $116/hr in total compensation.
I lived in a state where the median salary for cops was over $108k before overtime, benefits and bonuses. Many cops made over $250k+ a year with overtime. Some of them retire after 20 years with $250k a year pensions that municipalities are liable for.
Based on a sibling comment's data, the only state that comes close to that level is California. I think this is reflective more of the messed up economics of the state than anything else. If this guess is incorrect please let me know which state so I can update my model.
There's no denying being a senior cop is a good gig, but probably the gig of an average cop is a little more mundane. In many municipalities the highest paid public sector employee is a cop, but only a very small number of cops reach this status.
Forbes-via-BLS reports $89k average for the same time period, but it seems they are not including overtime. A ~20% increase in median pay from overtime is pretty substantial. It'd be interesting to see nominal and actual compared by state.
It's a political tool to highlight abusive behavior, and thus exert pressure for police reform. However if that is too abstract for you, an individual's legal team could use this tool determine if an arresting officer has a history of abuse and police perjury.
I imagine the impetus for this comes from the widespread accounts of cops that have long histories of abusive behavior and evidence tampering being tolerated and indeed covered up by the police. In fact in many states, disciplinary records are secret, and indeed there are moves in several states to make independently documenting abusive police encounters a criminal offense.
> an individual's legal team could use this tool determine if an arresting officer has a history of abuse and police perjury.
No self-respecting attorney would ever trust a third-party site with zero verification. You would literally get more accurate information from Twitter or Facebook.
> I imagine the impetus for this comes from the widespread accounts of cops that have long histories of abusive behavior and evidence tampering being tolerated and indeed covered up by the police.
All of these issues are only going to be correctly handled by legitimate authorities anyways, this site doesn't actually solve anything. Anything posted here can be safely ignored. If anything, this site's layout should just be translated to an official city's website for handling complaints, so that they can spend the money to use it and make it effective.
> All of these issues are only going to be correctly handled by legitimate authorities anyways,
I don't know why you believe this, because there's mountains of evidence contradicting this very thought. A simple google search for "poilce misconduct" will give page after page of both studies and individual cases where officers were known be abusive or committing perjury or mishandling evidence and yet this this information remained secret, and the officer remained employed for decades.
For instance David Cimperman had a long history of comitting felonies, perjury, and evidence tampering, and yet he became the Chief of Police for Amsterdam, OH. In what world is this considered "correctly handled"?
> No self-respecting attorney would ever trust a third-party site with zero verification. You would literally get more accurate information from Twitter or Facebook.
Of course they wouldn't, but now they have leads they can reach out to and verify. And if they want to give testimony, and the court will hear them, then they can do so under the threat of perjury.
> All of these issues are only going to be correctly handled by legitimate authorities anyways, this site doesn't actually solve anything
Except this hasn't been the case. There are plenty of examples of abuse of power by law enforcement being brushed under the rug by authorities until the public or their team of lawyers pressured them into doing something about it.
The stated goal on the website is good: better accountability.
But I’m afraid the proposed solution may lead to doxxing and threatening of police officers and their family members, ie 2021 style mob rule.
The correct solution would be more legislation requiring police to disclose whatever it should disclose. The law should define the level of police transparency, not anonymous justice warriors.
As if Yelp itself was even a good idea. I can't think of anyone I've met that's gone to anywhere based on positive Yelp reviews, but it takes no time at all to point to small businesses extorted and destroyed by review scammers.
> I can't think of anyone I've met that's gone to anywhere based on positive Yelp reviews
You’re kidding, right? They wouldn’t exist if people didn’t extract value out of them. I certainly have many, many, many times visited or hired businesses because of Yelp, and Aziz Ansari has an entire bit in this. Reviews are a backbone of much online commerce.
As much as you have decided to trust online reviews, Yelp has led to the destruction of good people's livelihoods. It has screwed over tons of people.
Of course even if Yelp were perfect or even good, it doesn't matter because this site is nothing like Yelp or RateMyProfessors, because there is no choice involved. It's not like you choose which officers or departments show up to your 911 call. If the police do show up, it's not like you check their RateOurCops score before they get to your door.
I wasn’t reacting to the web page (personally I don’t care for it at all for a wide variety of reasons), but to the comment that positive Yelp reviews don’t drive engagement.
You’re right. What we really need is GitHub for cops. Let’s see their “contributions.” Court records are almost always open. I’d like to see for any given cop, every case in which they were the arresting officer in an easily searchable format. Even better if it exposes suspect demographic information and charges.
I really don't want anyone to be rated publicly on the internet. I've good and bad interactions with cops, but all something like this would do is accumulate latent negative experiences probably until all cops have some. This is furthered by apparent social pressure to publicly deride cops in general, and I'd wager that even someone who's had good experiences with cops is much more likely to only publicly describe a bad experience.
People don't only exist at one point in time, neither do interactions. I witnessed a woman start filming and getting in the officers faces long after it was evident that the person obviously needed to be taken out of the space. Maybe she posted it to her Instagram. Nobody's going to challenge that, even though she was more likely just trying to draw attention to herself and getting in the way.
Idk, public shaming just seems like a shit way to run our world. It's hard to redeem yourself if some website has a negative description of you in writing. What recourse do you have, other than granting a company the ability to play arbiter in social disputes like this. Fuck that.
There are way too many misuse cases for this product. For example - someone who wants to convert good cops into bad cops could use a system like this to target good cops.
This website is golden, but there are some issues with fake reviews. For example, the top review of the Chicago Department [0] seems to be from someone very disgruntled at the idea of people sharing their opinions online.
Yelp? Yelp rates things like service quality, food quality, and whether your roofer did a good job.
I'm not so certain people will leave glowing positive reviews, or 4-star reviews of cops. "Fantastic service, the interior of the back of the car could have been more clean, I wish I could give this 3.5 stars."
Or, "Gave me directions when I was lost near 9th ave, looking the M&M store. Thanks! 5 stars."
But most likely, "Was rude, yelled at me, and then pushed me up against the wall. 1 star"
This idea is ridiculous. If you want a platform for civilian review, that does exist in some cities. Because, and this evidenced by some of the "how brave" comments below, this is really intended to punish bad cops and call them out. Calling this a Yelp is dishonest. If you want to be honest call it like it is, a complaint area.
In some cities there's a civilian review board, and there's a special section of the DA for investigating bad behavior and illegal behavior. The role of the cop is to enforce laws. Will this idea make them more accountable to those things, or does it exist to create mayhem using technology and an online platform for doxxing? That's not a rhetorical question - it's an honest question and I'm curious what people believe.
If you calculate the odds, the odds that an interaction with the police is a desired one is fairly low. You're either getting stopped / questioned / arrested / whatevered by the police when you're suspected of a crime. Or, something terrible happen and you're reporting a crime. The only 5 star experience is the tourist asking for directions, and even that is stretching it.
A restaurant provides a service in exchange for a payment. A police officer is taught to uphold the law, and interactions with the citizenry isn't like a hotelier interacting with a guest after a flight.
I'm not justifying anything the police do, or excusing anything. The case I'm making is that the metaphor of Yelp and service are just wrong. In the U.S., at least. And certainly in big cities. It's no picnic being on either side of the police-citizen interaction.
It doesn't have to be this way though. Instead of having, say, quotas on how many speeders they need to catch in a given month, maybe they could use that time proactively helping people or something. I guess that is too utopian.
If you don't catch speeders, you up the risk of speeders causing a vehicular crash, which can lead to injury or death for you and me. Legislative branches passed laws around maximum vehicle speed, cops enforce that as a deterrent. It's for all of us, not the waste of time you seem to be suggesting?
I was in Texas recently and saw first hand what it looks like when police enforce 0 traffic laws. It ain't pretty.
If you want to take the dim, sound-bite-and-karma-friendly approach of not really considering the argument you just read... sure, I can see how you could come to this conclusion.
Interesting idea but this is very likely to be sued out of existence very quickly. And depending on the nature of the anonymous comments left on specific officers' records, the operators of the website could very easily be criminally prosecuted.
This seems like an unnecessary service that is largely built off the unhinged fervor of dedicated activists. Cops are not bad people, by and large. They have been unfairly demonized this last year and in some past years, based off lone anecdotal examples. Remember, the police in America literally have hundreds of millions of interactions with citizens each year. There are very very few incidents of bad or unjust policing as a percentage of those interactions. In fact, I would argue the system is closer to being perfect than it is to being broken.
So what's the actual utility of this service? Those who have good experiences with cops will ignore it and not use it, while a small number of vocal and dedicated persons with an axe to grind may use it. At best, it will provide a biased perspective and open up avenues of abuse.
That may be true, but I can't help imagining a good cop seeing this and saying "Hey, that's not fair, you're watching us all the time, collecting all this information in a permanent record, just waiting to portray something innocent in a negative light and requiring us to clear our names." to which the response of the average citizens should be, "Right, now do you see why mass surveillance is bad?"
I suppose the difference is that you can potentially be off instagram. This is like someone else creating an insta account for you, downvoting it, and then having others judge you based off of that.
I don't know to what degree they are reviewing info, but the officer listings I saw were just office email and office phone. I can't imagine that's illegal in the EU.
Oh this is easy. Just rate ACAB. Anyone willing to actively participate in a racist and unjust system like American policing certainly deserves the ACAB badge.
Not a lot of reviews ... not that I find that surprising, nor the types of reviews that are being left ...
> Considering Chicago is the most violent city in America , the police are way too lenient and practice more social justice than they do law enforcement. The scale of punishment vs reward is way off. The revolving door of crime also known as recidivism is out of control. They spend too much money, time, and effort on policing the police than prosecuting forcible felons, including; pedophiles, murderers, and other heinous crimes. Ever since they have gone overboard with watchdog groups over emphasizing everything the police do wrong 1% of the time the crime had skyrocketed. I highly recommend you utilize your tech savvy rating blog to create charts and graphs comparing depolicing, lack of prosecution, and crime. You will find that this marxist agenda tool is the cause of the priblem a d not law enforcement. I therefore give the Chicago Police Deparment 5 stars and Communism no stars. Peace be with you. I pray to Jesus.
I'm certainly not making some sort of general statement about "working class people". The specific review quoted above is batshit crazy. There's nothing "communist" about holding authoritarian public officials to account. The "Red Scare" was like 70 years ago. Chicago isn't even in the top ten of most violent cities. There are more black men in prison right now than were enslaved at any point in our history. We have more people in the prison system than any other nation on earth, in the history of earth. (That is true whether measuring by count or by percentage.) Most of these people were thrown in prison during the last thirty years, a time period over which all crime in USA dropped precipitously. Literally every nation on earth in history has been more merciful than USA is right now.
I'm not sure why you would consider an unhinged stream of emotional bullshit to have anything to do with "working class".
The difference between our two streams is that everything I said is true and easily verifiable. Subjecting this disagreement to the "on-the-one-hand-on-the-other" treatment isn't going to teach us anything.
Where can I rank them for protecting people from Japanese mind control?
Something like "Seargent Smith seems quite competent: he told me that I had Japanese cloned consciousnesses in my head and that it was terminal - 4/5 stars".
Or "Detective Samantha of NJU lacked imagination and just thought I was screwed in the head, self-incriminating and wanted attention when I clearly wanted someone to 'clean house' again in my head - 2/5 stars"
Or "Officer Breen seemed to despise me, as he took notes on his Panasonic Toughbook without an ounce of thought - 3/5 stars".
Or "Did an obese redditor just upset the Japanese empire again?"
Legislation along the lines of anti-SLAPP laws could help, making the plaintiff pay for a failed action. But the political power of the police makes that unlikely, and if not narrowly tailored would discourage even well founded suits by plaintiffs with shallow pockets.