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: Injustice in Seattle

Plans for the new site

By David Packman

I just wanted to give people a quick summary of what I have in mind for the new nationally-focused site after I close this site down... and, of course, I welcome any other suggestions, opinions, comments, and any help I can get!

Stories: Provide in-depth analysis of police misconduct stories in the news that offers a viewpoint that doesn?t fall for the bias from police department spokespersons, police union representatives, and police beat reporters who develop biased relationships with and work with cops day-in and day-out.

Content will be put forward in a way that isn?t aggressive so that mainstream readers won?t be frightened off by anti-police rhetoric. Content will come from diverse sources that include victim-submitted stories of misconduct and contributions from experts in the field of police misconduct and civil rights law.

Statistics: The site will gather and share statistical information gathered from the National Police Misconduct News Feed, from local, state, and federal government sources, and from other independent sources in order to provide comparative statistical information in an effort to find out what the true scope of police misconduct really might be. Additional statistics will be gathered to help determine what the true cost of police misconduct is in terms of human life, human suffering, and economic terms as well.

Analysis: Information will be gathered from the statistical information we gather in addition to an examination of the policies in local police departments around the US as well as state laws that may affect the local rates of police misconduct by how difficult it is to discipline or fire police officers and laws that obscure instances of police misconduct.

This kind of information, combined with statistics on the prevalent types and rates of reported misconduct regionally will give valuable insight into what laws work to prevent misconduct and what laws encourage it as well as what states are more favorable towards civil rights and which ones are more dangerous to average citizens.

Advocacy: We hope to use all of this information to ultimately help prevent police misconduct, help identify officers prone to misconduct so they can be helped before they ruin their careers and the lives of others through acts of misconduct, and help the victims of misconduct seek justice as well as recover from the undocumented emotional trauma that comes with being a victim of a police crime.

We hope to accomplish change through informing people, letting people know that anyone can become a victim of police misconduct at any time, and what approaches work best at addressing police misconduct and what policies that enable police misconduct need to be changed.

Information Sharing: Since the goal is to inform the public all information will be easily accessible to any who try to find it. There will be no fees, no secret areas, no demands for attribution or any efforts to be the only holder of this information, especially since there has been so little of it gathered concerning this serious subject.

I want information to be free, to be used by others as often as they wish to share it so that more people become aware of the truth about police misconduct, which will bring about the desire to address it in meaningful ways instead of covering it up or putting lipstick on ineffective stopgap measures. Part of this will mean that I?ll pay close attention to the readability and ease of use for the site so that information is easy to find, easy to read, and interactive in ways that help people want to read it.

Resources: Eventually we?ll also be able to make a running list of lawyers who specialize in police misconduct issues as well as information on other resources out there and how best to use those resources in order to dispel some of the rumors that really make things worse when you?re a victim of police misconduct, like the rumor that the ACLU will help with police misconduct lawsuits when in fact, they rarely do and even then only under VERY specific circumstances.

Sadly, though, at least at first, we won?t have any resources to offer people directly other than the ability to have their stories of abuse published and access to the information we provide. Since we won?t have any hired legal professionals, we can?t offer any specific legal advice either, especially given how each state has different laws, some make it easier to pursue lawsuits for civil rights violations and others make it difficult, if not even potentially prohibitively costly to do so.

But, hopefully, maybe someday we can change that.

Summary: As you can see, I have big plans for this effort and many of these are things that have not been done yet, but that really must be done in order to get a better handle on the issue of police abuses and to, hopefully, improve things for the better. Hopefully we?ll be able to expand coverage beyond US borders, but for now it will take a lot of time for me to accomplish the ambitious plans I have for the new site? but hopefully we?ll all get there soon!

No longer in just Seattle, soon to be Everywhere soon!

Full post as published by Injustice in Seattle on May 14, 2009 (boomark / email).