The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition launched a database on Friday, March 17, that makes Los Angeles police officers’ information publicly available in an attempt to hold them accountable, the advocacy group says.
Called Watch the Watchers, the database provides officers’ headshots, names, hire dates, ranks and ethnicities compiled by volunteers with public-records requests, said Hamid Khan, a full-time organizer with the coalition.
“LAPD officers … will have probably the most contact with the community,” Khan said. “How many times do we go and get in contact with (other) public employees? But cops are a community that for whatever reason, we probably would have the most contact.”
The website includes a search bar where users can type in an LAPD officer’s name or serial number, which is an employee number and different from a badge number, to get the information.
The Watch the Watchers online database was launched Friday, March, 17, by the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. The database makes LAPD officers’ photos, names, dates of hire, ranks, and other information available free of charge online. (Screengrab)
LAPD declined to provide photographs of undercover officers, but it wasn’t clear if their names and other data were part of the roster LAPD released, said Matyos Kidane, another organizer with the group.
Photographs in the database are from 2022, while officers’ ranks, divisions, and bureaus are current as of January, according to the site.
“This website is intended as a tool to empower community members,” the website states. “You can use it to identify officers who are causing harm in your community.”
Obtaining badge numbers is still on the coalition’s to-do list, Khan said. So is adding officers’ weights and heights, which, he said, LAPD is refusing to provide. Earlier this week, the coalition filed a lawsuit against the LAPD to get the weights and heights.
The coalition, which says the database is the first of its kind in the country, was founded by Khan and others in 2011.
“This is our eighth public-record lawsuit since 2016,” Khan said. “We keep on telling them that this is a waste of our time, and by not releasing it (the requested information) to us — basically, you’re denying the whole community (of) having this information.”
LAPD declined to comment, citing a department policy regarding pending litigation.
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