Frequently Asked Questions

No. PoliceConduct.org is pro good policing. The goal is to recognize officers who serve professionally and respectfully, while also documenting conduct that harms public trust or violates rights.

This is a quiet opening. The site is live, but growth is intentionally slow while reporting, verification, privacy safeguards, and corrections workflows mature.

The first published report is the founder's account of an encounter in Irving, Texas involving Irving Police Officer James Markham.

Yes, sort of. We accept anonymous submissions, but during the quiet opening we manually verify reports before publishing. If a report is fully anonymous with no verifiable details, it may not be published. Include dates, locations, agencies, incident numbers, witnesses, or evidence links whenever possible.

Contact our support team and include your Report ID plus the email or phone number used during submission. That information lets us verify your request and locate your report.

Reports are reviewed manually for accuracy and safety. We are currently working through a backlog, so please allow at least one week for review and publication.

Choose the role that best matches your connection to the event: Primary Participant if it happened to you, Witness if you saw it happen, Representative if you are filing for someone else, Legal/Professional Advocate if you are reporting as part of a case, or Concerned Citizen if you are reporting based on secondary evidence.

Select Legal/Professional Advocate or Representative, then use the description field to clarify your professional relationship to the participant while honoring their privacy preferences.

Contact support using the email or phone number tied to the report. After verifying your identity, we can help recover the Report ID.

Police encounters can have enormous consequences, and the public deserves a realistic way to describe what happened. A respectful, professional stop deserves recognition. A dehumanizing or retaliatory encounter deserves scrutiny. The in-between is often where patterns start to show.

Two things: report positive interactions so great officers are recognized and professionalism is normalized, and report negative or concerning interactions with as much specificity and documentation as possible.

Reports are published anonymously by default. If you want attribution on a published report, contact our team and we will confirm your preference.

If you believe there has been retaliation, file another report about that incident. Retaliation should not go unreported.

No. PoliceConduct.org is independent and not affiliated with law enforcement agencies or government entities.

Yes, but it will be redacted before publication. We do not allow doxxing of anyone, including yourself, witnesses, or officers.

Yes. Federal officers and agencies are included. Submit the report with as much detail as you can and we will review it like any other submission.

You can submit reports for interactions from any time. Keep in mind that reports older than two years are less likely to be helpful for verification or follow-up.

That is okay. Share any identifying details you remember and one of our volunteers will do their best to identify the officer.

Yes. Historical reports are valuable for long-term patterns, though reports older than two years are less likely to be useful for immediate verification.

Please submit a single report for the full interaction and include all relevant files or links. This keeps review consistent and easier to process.

Add a hosted link in the Evidence Links section (Google Drive, Dropbox, YouTube, iCloud, etc.). Make sure sharing is set to “Anyone with the link can view” so reviewers can access it.

If a witness agrees to be contacted, include their name and contact details in the Witnesses section. We use this information for verification and do not publish it.

Witness reports are valuable and can corroborate a primary account. Note in your description that you are reporting as a witness.

Sharing information publicly can affect legal proceedings. If you have an active case, consider consulting an attorney before publishing details.

We focus on specific, factual descriptions, label allegations versus documentation versus opinion, encourage supporting materials, and maintain a correction process. Reports avoid unnecessary personal details and center on public-interest conduct.

No. PoliceConduct.org is a documentation and public-interest project. Nothing on the site is legal advice.

If someone identifies a specific factual error and provides credible evidence, we will correct it. If a dispute cannot be resolved quickly, the entry is updated to reflect the dispute and the evidence available on all sides. Use the Report Issue link in the footer to request a correction.

Yes. PoliceConduct.org supports responses, clarifications, and additional documentation. If new credible information changes a report, we aim to update it prominently.

We aim to publish every report, but submissions may be rejected or heavily redacted if they include hate speech, spam, or private information about uninvolved third parties.

Donations go into our general fund to support the national platform. This helps us scale manual review and clear backlogs across jurisdictions so every report gets timely review regardless of location.

Yes. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent permitted by law.

Visit our donation page at policeconduct.org/donate for current ways to support the project.

We use Stripe for secure, encrypted donation processing and receive reduced nonprofit transaction fees through Stripe’s Nonprofit Excellence Program. This keeps overhead low so more of your gift funds report review and database integrity. You will receive an automated tax receipt by email immediately after your donation is processed.