RateMyCop.com

RateMyCop.com was a review site that allowed United States residents to give feedback on police officers.

History[]

The website was launched on February 28, 2008, by Gino Sesto and Rebecca Costell of Culver City, California. The site launched with the names of over 140,000 police officers from more than 500 police departments in the United States. As of 2015, the site has been shut down.

2008 shutdown[]

On March 11, 2008, GoDaddy shut down RateMyCop.com after complaints from police officers.^[1][2] After being contacted about the shutdown, GoDaddy responded that it was due to "suspicious activity". However, the owner of the site was later told by GoDaddy that the site was shut down for reaching its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, although doubt has been expressed about the second explanation as the site had only 80,000 connected users that day and 400,000 the previous day.

Legal ruling on police officers' personal information[]

Federal Judge Richard Smoak struck down Florida Statute 843.17 on April 30, 2010, that made it a crime to publish police officers' addresses and phone numbers to intimidate, hinder or interfere with their duties. U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak ruled that the law violates free speech rights. Smoak ruled in favor of a Tallahassee man, Robert Brayshaw, who challenged the law with help from the American Civil Liberties Union. Brayshaw had been charged with violating the law for posting on a website the address and cell phone number along with criticism of a Tallahassee police officer. The charge was dismissed because the state violated Florida's speedy trial law. Smoak also ordered the city to pay Brayshaw's $25,000 in legal expenses for his false arrest as unconstitutional for being falsely and wrongfully applied to the law. The State of Florida paid $35,000 for the attorney fees for the legal challenge of the law being unconstitutional.^[3][4]

2020–Present: Successor emerges[]

In June of 2020, a new website using the name RateMyCop launched with the tagline "Like Yelp, but for cops.". The new site shares many of the same features as the original site and serves the same purpose. It is unknown if the new site is affiliated with the original site and the creators have remained anonymous. Shortly after launching the new site was renamed to RateOurCops.org due to unknown circumstances. Since launching the new site has added over 95,000 police officers and more than 1,900 police departments in the United States. Officer profiles include information such as name, age, salary, email and phone number. Information regarding the new sites origin is scarce and the creators remain unknown.

References[]