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Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

watchthewatchers.net

21–30 of 109 posts

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#21
post #8
post #2

Super curious why so many of the photos are missing. Something tells me LAPD's going to scrutinize the release of their photos going forward after that release. If you try to request photos of police in Chicago, they claim to have some wild esoteric process to get the photo such that if you request any more than 5 photos, they'll deny the request it unduly burdensome because of the way to access those photos. It's...…

Chicago is a wild case. I have a buddy on the south side who is part of a number of local political action groups which meet at local churches and are organized by alderman. The city is run by the mob. If people try to pull the curtain aside to expose it, they disappear. Yeah yeah, hearsay. But this is a friend of mine I trust being told directly by alderman. I have wondered for a while why Lightfoot has taken positi…

> The city is run by the mob.

Yeah and they are called police.

> Jon Graham Burge (December 20, 1947 – September 19, 2018) was an American police detective and commander in the Chicago Police Department who was found guilty of having "directly participated in or implicitly approved the torture" of at least 118 people in police custody in order to force false confessions.

Jon Burge Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Burge

Obviously Jon is very dead and quite retired but you can’t really maintain your spot as the most corrupt city in the country without buy-in from police.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#22

I’m not sure I understand the point of Copwatching and documenting police abuses. Everyone knows about police abuses—the police even document their own abuses themselves with bodycams. It doesn’t matter to them because there are never consequences. It’s pointless to do all this documenting without a way to turn it into accountability.

Tell that to Rodney king

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#23
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site doesn't seem to be thrown together very well, you can dump the entire DB by searching for a space character [0] (assuming every officer should have a space in their full name). It dumps as a nice JSON format with all the details. All the headshots can easily be extracted by appending " https://watchthewatchers.net/headshots/ " to the values from the "imagePath" value in the JSON dump. [0] https://watchthewat…

> you can dump the entire DB by searching for a space character I abused this trick to perform local fuzzy searches for usernames, results would update with no delay on every keypress, the competing devs were so blown away and couldn't tell how I did it lol. Best exploit ever. It wouldn't have scaled but it was still so funny to see everyone else's reactions.

In my experience the vast majority of the time exploits are found over Ajax APIs. Developers just forget that sanitization client side isn't secure. It's a good party trick for sure.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#24
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chicago is a wild case. I have a buddy on the south side who is part of a number of local political action groups which meet at local churches and are organized by alderman. The city is run by the mob. If people try to pull the curtain aside to expose it, they disappear. Yeah yeah, hearsay. But this is a friend of mine I trust being told directly by alderman. I have wondered for a while why Lightfoot has taken positi…

> The city is run by the mob. Yeah and they are called police. > Jon Graham Burge (December 20, 1947 – September 19, 2018) was an American police detective and commander in the Chicago Police Department who was found guilty of having "directly participated in or implicitly approved the torture" of at least 118 people in police custody in order to force false confessions. Jon Burge Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.or…

Let's not oversimplify, I'm sure some mobsters aren't under such dubious employ as the City of Chicago.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#25

I’m not sure I understand the point of Copwatching and documenting police abuses. Everyone knows about police abuses—the police even document their own abuses themselves with bodycams. It doesn’t matter to them because there are never consequences. It’s pointless to do all this documenting without a way to turn it into accountability.

a few things: 1) it can be used by defense attorneys if they want to discredit an officer during a trial 2) it can be used for victim’s or abuse to obtain context and realise they’re not alone 3) public naming and shaming disincentivises bad behaviour

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#26
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site doesn't seem to be thrown together very well, you can dump the entire DB by searching for a space character [0] (assuming every officer should have a space in their full name). It dumps as a nice JSON format with all the details. All the headshots can easily be extracted by appending " https://watchthewatchers.net/headshots/ " to the values from the "imagePath" value in the JSON dump. [0] https://watchthewat…

Here's a preview of clicking the API link: https://i.imgur.com/nbhL64L.png It took a while to load for me, so I'm posting this to spare the site from the HN hug of death, even if just a little bit.

I saved it, just incase it gets removed.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#28

Unless there is an equivalent LAPD initiative that uploads the pictures of law-abiding citizens with names and other identifying info to the public web, there will be suspicions that this is an anti-police (rather than anti-police-surveillance-abuse) measure intended to intimidate and obstruct police work. Neither is it clear how representative the organizers are of those law-abiding citizens generally rather than a…

It is public information, this is just an interface to access it. Google LASD Gangs, we need more transparency, not less.

Re: Watch the Watchers: LAPD officer database

#29

Unless there is an equivalent LAPD initiative that uploads the pictures of law-abiding citizens with names and other identifying info to the public web, there will be suspicions that this is an anti-police (rather than anti-police-surveillance-abuse) measure intended to intimidate and obstruct police work. Neither is it clear how representative the organizers are of those law-abiding citizens generally rather than a…

By the lords above, beside, and below I am not going to pearl clutch and nitpick actions that disrupt police. They already have the systemic benefit of the doubt and so much more. If we start torturing their families on live camera then give me a page but until then.... I sleep.
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