RateMyCop.com Temporarily Shut Down

Posted on March 12, 2008

A website called Rate My Cop that allows people to rate police officers that they have interacted with or have ticketed them was temporarily shut down by GoDaddy.com, an online domain retailer and website.

RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension. When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he'd been shut down for "suspicious activity."
When Sesto got a supervisor on the phone, the company changed its story and claimed the site had surpassed its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, a claim that Sesto says is nonsense. "How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,00 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?"
Police departments became uneasy about RateMyCop's plans to watch the watchers in January, when the Culver City, California, startup began issuing public information requests for lists of uniformed officers.
Then the site went live on February 28th. It stores the names and, in some cases, badge numbers of over 140,000 cops in as many as 500 police departments, and allows users to post comments about police they've interacted with, and rate them. The site garnered media interest this week as cops around the country complained that they'd be put at risk if their names were on the internet.

Wired links to this ABC story which says police offers are very upset about the website. Police officers are particularly concerned that the site may contain personal information about them such as their home address, marriage status and children.

"I'd like to see it gone," says Officer Hector Basurto, vice president of the Latino Police Officers Association. He recently learned about Ratemycop.com and is furious.
"Having a Web site like that puts a lot of law enforcement, in my eyes, in danger because it exposes us out there," says Officer Basurto.
"Having a website like that puts a lot of law enforcement, in my eyes, in danger because it exposes us out there," Officer Hector Basurto, vice president of the Latino Police Officers Association, told ABC television affiliate KGO.

Wired says RateMyCop does not include information about undercover officers and there is no information about officers' home addresses.

Update: RateMyCop.com is back online now.