CopBlaster.com has added 1,287 new names to its National Decertification Index (https://copblaster.com/decertified/) that were released last week by the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training (DPSST). In response to the public outcry following George Floyd's murder, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed into law House Bill 4207 (https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2020S1/Downloads/MeasureDocument/HB4207/Enrolled) which required the DPSST to create a public online database listing everyone whose DPSST certification has ever been revoked, suspended, denied, or relinquished (see source link above article). The result was the release of over 1,700 records pertaining to police officers, corrections officers, parole/probation officers, and various types of support staff such as dispatchers, instructors, regulatory specialists, and telecommunicators.
Since this website is about police misconduct, we added a subset of that data focusing on suspensions and revocations impacting police officers, corrections officers, and parole/probation officers. We also took steps to eliminate duplicate names that were subject to more than one action for consistency. The end result is 1,287 new posts added to a couple hundred that were already there. These posts have some advantages over the DPSST website:
1) They create unique bookmarkable URLs for each officer that can be shared and indexed by major search engines. As a result we anticipate a lot of people looking for these people for other reasons will find out that they lost their Oregon DPSST certifications. We also anticipate plenty of complaints and threats similar to the ones we have already received from decertified officers whose names were released last year (ex: https://copblaster.com/blast/5434/threatening-letter-received-from-russell-joseph-grover-jr);
2) Users can add their own descriptions to each report and post comments, so people that know why the officers were subject to suspensions or revocations can be heard including the former officers should they feel the need to set the record straight;
3) Our user interface (UI) is more user friendly and allows people to browse listings. The DPSST website just has a blank text box for people to type in search criteria, so if you don't know what to look for you will struggle to find what you are looking for. Our UI lets people browse through all records just in case their text searches come up empty.
4) Our database actually contains old cases resolved before this year. If you visit the DPSST website you will see that they did not actually add any old cases to the newly minted database. They provide an Excel file for those at https://www.oregon.gov/dpsst/CJ/Documents/RevokeDeniedSuspend.xlsx and for all open cases there is a PDF (https://www.oregon.gov/dpsst/CJ/Documents/OpenCases.pdf). As far as we can tell the database is actually empty and will be until the first open case is resolved.
For the above reasons we believe that our actions have done a lot to make the new DPSST database more effective. The goal behind the database is to make it more difficult for bad officers that lose their certification in one state find work in another. Those gypsy cops often find themselves the subject of misconduct allegations at their new job and often their new bosses don't know that they were decertifed in another state. Still, to use the DPSST database their new bosses would have to know about the DPSST website and specifically look for their new applicants there. By creating bookmarkable URLs for search engines to find there is a high probability that future employers will learn of these decertifications when using Google to screen applicants.