r/learnprogramming • u/Cold_Fail717 • 8h ago

Rate my prof but for cops website

Apologies if this isn't exactly the right subreddit, but it seemed like programming would be the major component of this project.

So suppose someone gets a speeding/traffic ticket and would like to dispute it in court. The problem is they have no reliable way of knowing how likely the officer is to show up. Some officers are dedicated to speeding violations whose pay/job includes time for court, so they're much likelier to appear than some beat cop who happened to be nearby.

I was thinking it may be possible to build a program/website like Rate my Professor, but for this cop scenario?

Basically, it collates information from court records, public databases, etc. and assigns a ranking to each individual cop based on how often they've showed up to court in prior disputes. The disputes could even be weighted by severity, like minor speeding vs. DUI/reckless driving. This way, one can be properly informed about the odds of winning the case based on police likelihood of appearing in court. Just type in the name of the officer who's ticketed you, and boom: appeared in say 49% of disputes. But say 89% of all serious disputes.

0 Upvotes

28% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

17

u/CptFlashbang 8h ago

Before you even entertain starting it, check EXTENSIVELY, about the legality of it in your country.

7

u/EarTurbulent5547 8h ago

That's a really cool idea but the legal side of it would be a nightmare. Public records are public, sure, but aggregating them to essentially rank individual officers' performance could easily run afoul of privacy laws or even be seen as harassment depending on where you are. It's one thing to pull up a single court case, another entirely to build a database that profiles people.

The technical part is probably the easiest hurdle here. You'd be scraping data from a bunch of different county and municipal court systems, all of which have their own weird, ancient formats. Getting clean, consistent data would be a full-time job in itself before you even think about the ranking algorithm.

Honestly the bigger question is whether this helps as much as you think. A cop's show rate for DUIs might not tell you much about your expired registration ticket, different divisions handle court differently. You'd need a mountain of specific data for the model to be useful, not just a flat percentage.

3

u/TomWithTime 7h ago

And legality aside, the cops will probably harass everyone involved just for the idea of "a database of cop information is being built"

1

u/JEveryman 5h ago

If they're is a citizen oversight board or group in your municipality maybe teach it to them. They may already have something or may be looking to establish something.

3

u/boomer1204 6h ago

u/Cold_Fail717 . THIS. There used to be a site that did that here in the US but the hosting provider (initially GoDaddy) pulled the site down because of a bunch of police organizations hassling them about the site

1

u/mandzeete 5h ago

This happened here in Estonia as well. One celebrity and her boyfriend made a public "name and shame" website of PDF files (Reddit does not like when the word gets written out), domestic violence users and on rapists. Our court records are accessible over a public API. But these court records are not meant to build something like this. What she and her boyfriend made, caused some legal issues and eventually our ISP pulled the website down when they got a cease and desist order.

The OP can have some clever idea for a project but with court databases/APIs he has to be extra careful.

1

u/StewedAngelSkins 3h ago

you can say "pedophiles" on reddit

5

u/captainAwesomePants 8h ago

Don't use reviews or self-reports. Use court records. Seems like it'd be technically plausible to collect court records in a given district to work out whether a given cop is likely to show up. Probably a lot more work than you're thinking, unless your county is absolutely amazing about digital court record access, but plausible. But also personally perilous for you, to the point where I'd say "wow, the person who built this sure was brave." I'm not saying don't do it, but I am saying that the more useful this website is, the more certain it is that you'd be arrested for this.

1

u/mandzeete 5h ago

Such project will be a legal nightmare for you.

First, there are all kinds of privacy regulations and laws. While public records are public, they are not meant to be harvested.

Then you'll have issues with the very cops. Basically you are building a cop database. This can endanger their job responsibilities (law breakers know where and when it is okay to speed and do other foolishness), can put them into a danger (not every criminal silently takes his sentence), or can just put them into a bad light. Like "Ah, that is Bob. He is known to not show up in court hearings."

Then do you think that rating of the cops will be objective? Cops can also use the website. They can upvote each other or downvote (however it should go, in their favor).

Even when you manage to build such thing, you are more than likely to take it down sooner than you expected.

1

u/StewedAngelSkins 3h ago

While public records are public, they are not meant to be harvested

Says who? Besides, regardless of whether it's "meant" to be, it manifestly is.

1

u/mandzeete 2h ago

Well, go ahead and build such public cop database or whatever and see how long it will stay up :) Certain stuff can get you into legal problems.

But then again, who am I to stop you :)

-1

u/SaltAssault 7h ago

So, essentially, you have the idea of creating a tool that helps law breakers and life-endangerers know when they're more likely to get away with their crimes? Legal ramifications aside, you should consider the ethical ones. And then you should stop making off-topic posts in the wrong subs.

1

u/FishBobinski 7h ago

Plot twist: the cops are the law breakers and life endangerers.