What are the phases of the Watchman Project?

Watchman is built in phases because police accountability becomes much more powerful when you start with the
right data first.

Phase 1: Build the jurisdiction-wide officer database

The first phase is usually the most important: we request the
internal affairs and complaint history, career data, demographics, training records, and other officer-history data
for every law enforcement officer in a jurisdiction.

Depending on the size of the agency and local records costs, this can often be done for roughly
$3,000–$6,000.

This phase is incredibly powerful because it gets every officer in that jurisdiction onto the site and gives the public,
attorneys, journalists, criminal defendants, and community members a real way to understand who they are dealing with.
Instead of one isolated incident or one viral video, we create a
searchable accountability layer for the entire department.

Civilians are also able to submit
ID-verified encounters
and quickly locate officers they have encountered through our police officer database tool.

Phase 2: Give attorneys, defendants, and the public usable records

This changes the game for attorneys and defendants because they can look up officers connected to their cases,
review misconduct histories, identify patterns, and download available case documents and videos from our platform.

It also changes the game for civilians because the people with power over arrests, use of force, testimony,
and criminal cases are no longer just names on a police report.
Their public accountability history becomes easier to
find, compare, document, and understand.

We also create powerful data sets that can be distributed to hundreds of attorneys in that jurisdiction.
These data sets can essentially give attorneys their own internal affairs database.
If they had to request and build this data themselves, it could easily cost
$10,000–$100,000.

During this phase, we also request
blue-on-blue complaints and civilian complaints
for every officer whenever available.

Phase 3: Focus on fatalities and major force cases

The second major records phase focuses on the most serious incidents first.
We request full internal affairs files, use-of-force records, body camera footage, 911 audio, CAD reports,
incident reports, and related documents for
fatalities, officer-involved shootings, deaths in custody, and major use-of-force events.

These are the cases where transparency matters most and where the public has the strongest need to understand what happened.

Phase 4: Target the highest-priority officers

The next phase is targeted expansion.
Once we have the department-wide officer data, we use it to identify officers with the highest number of IA events,
complaints, use-of-force indicators, disciplinary patterns, or other risk signals.

We then request deeper records and body camera footage for a top percentage of those officers.
This lets us focus time and money where it can have the biggest impact instead of randomly requesting records with no strategy.

Phase 5: Upload, catalog, and make the data usable

Once we have the data, uploading it and cataloging it on our site can often be done within a few minutes to a day.
We have spent hundreds of hours building software to help make this possible.

The goal is not just to collect records.
The goal is to turn scattered government files, PDFs, videos, complaints, and officer histories into something
attorneys, civilians, journalists, and communities can actually use.

The only thing missing is the funding to do it at scale.

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