Scope & Scale

Recently while talking with a friend they asked if CopDB is a regional or national project. The answer is tricky…

Cops are everywhere, and ideally they would all be recorded. CopDB has been built so there are a few ways it could grow in the future to help with this. One way could be for other regions to host their own instances, another is that they could use the current instance and we could have moderators living within regions that are responsible for those regions.

Regardless of what expansion looks like, one thing is clear: With the size and location of the team we have now, CopDB is essentially “Utah CopDB”. This is currently a local project and therefore will have a local focus. The only reason the project, sites, and socials are simply under “CopDB” is so that eventually if the project grows there can be central places for people to interact with the development of the project, as in the hosting of the services and the development of the software. Ideally there would eventually be “Utah CopDB” or even “Salt Lake CopDB” online presences that people would interact with and that would publish local analysis.

There are far too many cops, doing way too much violence for our current team to be able to document all of it. Furthermore each region has its own unique monsters to deal with that need heavy investigation. That’s why our current goal is to get the project off the ground enough that people can join a stable platform and dive in on documenting the violence of cops.

If you’re interested in helping in any way please reach out! There is work to be done on just about every facet of the project, the majority of which are not technical. If we want to abolish the cops we need to work together, whether that means wheat-pasting, putting up stickers, documenting cops, ███████ ████, or any other direct action.