[HN Gopher] RateOurCops - Like Yelp, but for Cops
___________________________________________________________________
RateOurCops - Like Yelp, but for Cops
Author : Roco_
Score : 158 points
Date : 2021-07-02 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rateourcops.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (rateourcops.org)
| mancerayder wrote:
| 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.
| colecut wrote:
| I guess the case that you are making is that police generally
| provide much worse service than restaurants
| mancerayder wrote:
| 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.
| coolspot wrote:
| Next step is "rateaperson" a la blackmirror.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I suppose you never heard of Instagram or LinkedIn likes.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Or Peeple
| iammisc wrote:
| 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 guess LinkedIn fits the bill better.
| golemiprague wrote:
| They should make also RateOurCriminal just for balance, or maybe
| RateOurCitizen like they do in China to some extent but in a less
| blatant way. This idea is more of a political agenda than an
| honest attempt to improve policing. police service is not like a
| commercial transaction where both sides can choose who they deal
| with and both sides have an interest for the interaction to be
| successful.
| wydfre wrote:
| 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?"
| Ensorceled wrote:
| 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.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| What do you mean by 'types of reviews'?
|
| What 'type' is this?
| jessaustin wrote:
| I'd suggest "batshit crazy".
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| A lot of people - particularly working class people - would
| agree with this assessment. Do you genuinely believe
| they're all "batshit crazy"?
| caiob wrote:
| Make it available for Canadian provinces too.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Would love to see the reaction from everyone here with an
| equivalent: RateOurEngineers.com
|
| John - Dicks around on HackerNews all day and doesn't get any
| work done. 1/5 stars, would not hire.
| heartbreak wrote:
| 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.
| WoahNoun wrote:
| 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.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| 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.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > Cops are not bad people, by and large.
|
| 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?"
| rubatuga wrote:
| 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?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Store owners sometimes advertise their bad yelp reviews as a
| point of pride, just to show how unseriously they take those
| reviews: https://www.boredpanda.com/yelp-one-star-review-owner-
| comeba...
| ipaddr wrote:
| 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.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Cool, you gonna do that? What you're describing is networking
| and that's not going to fight that decades of built nepotism
| and brotherhoods.
| dheera wrote:
| Most local communities aren't going to do that.
| black_13 wrote:
| This is more information will make more freedom fallacy.
| Technology doesn't solve bad ideas and bad philosophy.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Awesome project. Will you be adding Seattle anytime soon? Would
| love this for our area - we've got plenty of problematic cops up
| here.
| Roco_ wrote:
| Thank you! Seattle PD has just been added by someone
| https://rateourcops.org/agencies/2955
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "Like Yelp..."
|
| You know, they may turn out to be more correct than they
| intended...
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| 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. If this site is
| actually used by people, most cops regardless of behavior will
| end up with poor ratings, and that's ignoring the inevitable
| brigading that will occur whenever there is controversy.
|
| As these ratings have no bearing on whether police keep their
| job, whether a civilian interacts with a given cop, whether they
| are promoted, or anything else, all this really serves to do is
| 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.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| 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.
| Roco_ wrote:
| A lawsuit would be good PR.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| no it wouldn't.
| aliasEli wrote:
| This site would definitely be illegal in the EU. GDPR certainly
| prohibits showing details like phone or email info.
|
| I can understand that people want to hold police accountable for
| their actions but I don't think this is the way to do it.
| tyingq wrote:
| 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.
| rOOb85 wrote:
| Same thing for the officers I checked. All emails/phones were
| publicly listed on their own agencies websites.
| haroldp wrote:
| What is the point of this if it omits the step where you can
| choose not to use someone's services if you don't like their
| rating?
| jonathankoren wrote:
| 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.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| > 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _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.
| asteroidbelt wrote:
| 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.
| tyingq wrote:
| It sets up the launch of the companion site where you buy
| improved service.
| haroldp wrote:
| My city has a monopoly contract with one provider. I don't
| get to choose.
| tyingq wrote:
| Oh, no, not like that. It helps you understand when you
| might need to let a $100 fall out of your wallet when
| you're pulled over.
| haroldp wrote:
| What's $100 to a dude making over $100 per hour?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| an hour of work
| blix wrote:
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| 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.
| newbie789 wrote:
| > Assuming a 40hr/wk schedule...
|
| 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.
|
| 1 https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-police-
| average-30-million-...
| blix wrote:
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There are a lot of places in the US where the chief of
| police is the highest paid employee on a municipality's
| payroll.
| haroldp wrote:
| Here's a search for the pay for every "sergeant" in my
| state. Not brand new cops, but not lieutenants, captains
| of chiefs either:
|
| https://transparentnevada.com/salaries/search/?q=sergeant
|
| Cops make a lot more than most people realize.
| blix wrote:
| $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.
| haroldp wrote:
| 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.
| blix wrote:
| 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.
| newbie789 wrote:
| 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")
|
| https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-police-officers-
| overwo...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewdepietro/2020/04/23/po
| lic...
|
| https://www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-lender-police-
| pay-2...
|
| https://www.marketplace.org/2020/07/03/police-
| departments-ha...
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/us/15-portland-police-officers-
| see-l...
|
| 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."
| blix wrote:
| 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.
| newbie789 wrote:
| > 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.
| blix wrote:
| > 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.
| haroldp wrote:
| 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.
|
| Oh he got a second DUI this year too.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There was a cop in one state who was caught taking $20
| and $50 bribes from people. He was making over $200k a
| year.
|
| It's not about money, it's about power.
| azinman2 wrote:
| This doesn't really work in the US (thankfully). You
| gotta go far, far bigger and it not be a traffic ticket
| for that to work. Think cartel.
| timcambrant wrote:
| "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."
| sparker72678 wrote:
| Good advice for any law enforcement encounter.
| sbussard wrote:
| 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.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _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.
|
| [1] https://ratemyteachers.com/
| easterncalculus wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://ratemyteachers.com/faq
| heavyset_go wrote:
| 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.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| > 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _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.
|
| Sites like the OP give people that option.
| rOOb85 wrote:
| > 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?
| easterncalculus wrote:
| People can post whatever they want in the reviews. There's no
| verification process, or privacy policy. At best, this is
| "just trust us".
| rOOb85 wrote:
| OK, I see how that could be a issue.
| leesalminen wrote:
| You can certainly choose where to live and travel though based
| on these reviews.
| judge2020 wrote:
| 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%.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| 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.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| You do realize that cops -- _especially_ bad cops -- change
| departments all the time.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/16/what-
| happ...
| easterncalculus wrote:
| 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.
| rOOb85 wrote:
| Except cities and agencies are choosing not to implement
| things like this. And they even go as far as keeping this
| information secret from the public.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| 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.
| smoldesu wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0] https://rateourcops.org/agencies/1425
| macspoofing wrote:
| This won't have any unintended consequences ... no sir.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| 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.
| azinman2 wrote:
| > 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.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| arionhardison wrote:
| 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.
|
| Link: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/crowdsource-police-
| reviews-...
| nilstycho wrote:
| What were the serious issues you observed?
| cwkoss wrote:
| > 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.
|
| https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/06/30/oig-memo-reveals-...
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| 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.
| cwkoss wrote:
| 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)
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| Run for office. You live in a democracy.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What should citizens do when the government and official
| capacities are completely failing to hold police accountable?
|
| Replace their governments. Ideally, at the ballot box.
| bmarquez wrote:
| > 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.
| jonas21 wrote:
| They also seem to have no privacy policy, nor any way to flag
| inaccurate content, harassment, etc. Yikes!
| easterncalculus wrote:
| 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.
| judge2020 wrote:
| 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).
| jonas21 wrote:
| That's what I thought at first, but they also have an
| "Enterprise" page where you can buy their data, so who
| knows what they're thinking.
|
| https://rateourcops.org/enterprise
| lodovic wrote:
| Wait until the first influencer is arrested and the cops
| involved are mass downvoted by all their followers.
| whymauri wrote:
| As this site stands, could a department run an automated
| astroturfing operation?
|
| Seems... not good.
| hirundo wrote:
| 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.
| webmobdev wrote:
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _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.
| perihelions wrote:
| Forget libel -- in some states, it potentially introduces
| criminal liability!
|
| https://kfor.com/news/oklahoma-legislature/controversial-ant...
| [2021]
|
| > _" 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).
|
| https://www.eff.org/files/2019/02/22/order_granting_pi.pdf
|
| Here's a longer (two page PDF) summary of the same, glossing
| some definitions:
|
| https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11072 [.pdf]
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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).
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > It cannot be doxxing...
|
| 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.
|
| I would not want to risk it here.
| Jiro wrote:
| 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.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| dvt wrote:
| > 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.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It seems unconstitutional to me; you have no expectation of
| privacy when you're out in public, and badge numbers are
| legally required to be worn.
|
| This combination in effect turns into a requirement to
| either not film, or not post videos of cops, which is
| unconstitutional.
| dvt wrote:
| > 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.
|
| [1] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-1st-
| circuit/1578557.html
| perihelions wrote:
| It's perfectly legal to post videos of any of those
| things.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_call_recording
| _laws#...
|
| 2. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/you-have-first-
| amendme...
| ashtonkem wrote:
| 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.
| leesalminen wrote:
| 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.
| canadianfella wrote:
| I don't understand why your sexual preferences are
| relevant.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| WoahNoun wrote:
| Sounds pretty cowardly and against the principle of
| community policing.
| [deleted]
| tshaddox wrote:
| 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.
| dvt wrote:
| > They're public officials
|
| 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.
|
| This is extremely reductive.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| 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.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > They're not elected
|
| Who said they were?
|
| > nor are they public
|
| They work in the public sector. That's what 'public'
| means.
| subroutine wrote:
| 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)?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| If they're taking public money of course they should be
| accountable to the public.
| torstenvl wrote:
| > _They work in the public sector. That 's what 'public'
| means._
|
| No, in the context of the First Amendment, that is
| emphatically _not_ what it means. Where did you go to law
| school?
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| munk-a wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway_egbs wrote:
| You can record on-duty police officers in California
| without their permission.
|
| https://www.jmllaw.com/blog/keep-mind-9-rules-of-filming-
| pol...
|
| https://www.solutionlawapc.com/criminal-defense/the-
| right-to...
|
| https://www.vjamesdesimonelaw.com/can-you-film-police-
| when-s...
|
| There was even a bill passed in 2015 (still in effect)
| that affirmatively declared a right to record: https://le
| ginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
| munk-a wrote:
| That's correct - but I don't believe other public
| officials similarly lack the right to privacy even while
| operating in their official capacity.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| 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.
| dheera wrote:
| Maybe make this a blockchain project instead. Videos of cops
| doing bad things should be decentralized, non-deletable, and
| optionally anonymous.
| asteroidbelt wrote:
| Is video deletion an issue? I don't recall any episode where
| videos of cops abuses were had to be taken down. It is
| opposite every time, each video becomes highly viral and
| reposted to hundreds of services.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| 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.
| FreeSpeech wrote:
| 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.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Sounds pretty abusable to me..
| dheera wrote:
| Maybe the cops should stop abusing citizens then.
| ironmagma wrote:
| More that a non-deletable video storage system will
| probably accumulate lots of spam.
| [deleted]
| asteroidbelt wrote:
| Cops would be abused and cops abusing citizens are
| different cops.
|
| There's no group police guilt. Good cops should not be
| punished for the deeds of bad cops.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| So abusing innocent cops just doing their job is just
| collateral damage?
| rOOb85 wrote:
| How would posting videos of good cops doing good things
| be "abuse"?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.)
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Section 230 should apply here. The operators of the website are
| not legally on the hook for what their users post.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| 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."
|
| https://variety.com/2013/biz/news/isohunt-to-shut-down-as-
| pa...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This is about as illegal, or encourages illegal activity,
| as Rate My Professors, Glassdoor or Blind.
| kevingadd wrote:
| 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
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Attempted. Such laws have so far not stood up to judicial
| scrutiny.
| xupybd wrote:
| If a cop is doing their job what percentage of their interactions
| with the public would be positive for the person they are
| interacting with?
|
| I understand the problem this site is trying to address but I'm
| not sure this is the correct metric.
| ListenLinda wrote:
| The current model will not work. No way to fact check reviews, no
| way to prevent spam. Amazon has the same problem with their
| public reviews.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-02 23:00 UTC)