Publication Standards — Corrupt Cop Watch

Verification Threshold

This standard governs CCW Verified and CCW Authored content — the two content classes where CCW is the publisher and stands on truth as the defense. User submissions publish live under 47 U.S.C. § 230 without a pre-publication review gate; the threshold below applies when CCW reviews a user post for the CCW Verified badge, or when CCW authors first-party content.

Every factual claim in CCW Verified or CCW Authored content must be supported by at least two independent primary sources. Independence means the sources do not derive their information from each other. A newspaper article that cites a court record is not independent of that court record — it is one source that points to another. Both the article and the underlying record count separately when each provides independent corroboration.

Two is the floor, not the target. Claims of pattern — an officer's repeated conduct across incidents, a department's documented history, a prosecutor's charging decisions over time — require enough documented instances to establish the pattern. One incident does not establish a pattern. The number of required sources scales with the strength of the claim.

Qualifying Sources

Court records and judicial filings — docket entries, motions, orders, judgments, transcripts, and settlement documents in their original filed form.
Official government documents — incident reports, internal affairs investigation findings, use-of-force reports, civilian complaint records, and official disciplinary records in official form.
Named-outlet journalism — bylined reporting from established news organizations, where the article identifies the reporter and the organization and the reporting is independently verifiable. Wire service stories and regional newspaper investigations qualify. Aggregated "roundup" pieces that do not independently report qualify only for the underlying source they cite.
FOIA and public records releases — documents obtained through formal public records processes, in their original form. The release itself is the source.
Official municipal and agency records — budget documents, settlement disclosures, legislative records, official meeting minutes, and government databases in their publicly released form.

Non-Qualifying Sources

Anonymous submissions alone. An anonymous submission opens a sourcing investigation. It cannot by itself satisfy the verification threshold.
Social media posts. Posts on any platform — X, Facebook, Reddit, Nextdoor, or similar — do not qualify as primary sources, regardless of the number of shares or reactions. They may point toward primary sources, which is their documentary value.
Forum claims and community accounts. Unattributed community forum posts, neighborhood platforms, and online discussion threads do not qualify.
Secondhand reports without a traceable primary document. An article that says "according to sources" without a citable document, or a community account that cannot be traced to an official record, does not independently satisfy the threshold.

Official Capacity Only

Corrupt Cop Watch documents public officials acting in their official capacity. This boundary is structural, not editorial.

We document officers for conduct in their official law enforcement role: use of force on duty, misconduct in performance of official duties, falsification of official records, corruption involving the official role. We document departments for institutional policies, supervision practices, and settlement patterns arising from official conduct. We document prosecutors for charging decisions, declination patterns, and conduct in their official prosecutorial role.

We do not document:

Private individuals who are not public officials
Off-duty conduct with no nexus to official responsibilities or official-capacity conduct (a personal dispute, a private transaction)
Family members, associates, or other private parties

This scope is the precondition for the applicable legal standard. Public officials acting in official capacity are subject to the actual-malice standard under New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). That standard protects documented factual reporting on public officials' official conduct. Extending coverage to private individuals or private conduct removes that protection and is not something we will do.

Sourcing on the Page

CCW Verified and CCW Authored entries render their source citations inline — adjacent to the claim they support, not as footnotes or a separate bibliography. No factual claim in CCW Verified or CCW Authored content publishes without an attached, navigable source reference. If a source cannot be cited, the claim does not appear. This is not a style preference. It is the mechanism by which the truth defense holds: the documentation is on the page, public, and verifiable by anyone.

Correction and Removal Policy

Right to Reply

Any named individual, or their authorized representative, may contact Corrupt Cop Watch to submit a factual correction, provide exoneration documentation, or offer additional context. Contact us at corrections@corruptcopwatch.com.

We will acknowledge receipt within 72 hours and provide a substantive response within 30 days. Complex matters requiring document review may take longer; we will communicate the extended timeline.

Correction Process

To submit a correction, provide:

The specific page URL and the specific claim you believe is in error.
Documentation supporting the correction — official records, court documents, or other primary sources are preferred.
Contact information for follow-up.

Corrections go through the same two-source verification standard as original claims. A documented correction is published prominently on the affected entry page. We do not quietly amend published entries — corrections are visible and timestamped.

Exoneration Updates

Where a conviction is overturned, an officer is formally exonerated by an official process, or official findings are reversed, we will update the relevant entry to accurately reflect the current official record. Exoneration does not require removal of prior documentation — it requires honest representation of the full timeline, including the exoneration.

The accurate record includes what was documented and what the documented outcome was, at each point in time. We do not rewrite history — we extend the record.

Takedown Criteria

We will remove a published entry if:

The underlying sources are demonstrated to be fabricated or materially false — not disputed, but documented as false.
A court with applicable jurisdiction orders removal.
The named subject is confirmed to not be a public official acting in official capacity as we define it above.
The entry cannot be brought into compliance with our verification standard following review.

We do not remove entries because the subject finds them unflattering. We do not remove entries in response to legal threats that do not result in a court order. We do remove entries that fail our verification standard upon review. The distinction is between the factual record and discomfort with the factual record.

SLAPP Response Policy

Strategic lawsuits against public participation are recognized for what they are. A SLAPP attempt against a documented, source-verified entry will be responded to with simultaneous notification to allied organizations (EFF, ACLU, NPAP) and public documentation of the attempt. We have pre-established relationships with organizations that provide legal support for exactly this scenario.

Pre-Launch Review

Corrupt Cop Watch is in build phase. The site does not go public until:

The verification standard above is confirmed by counsel.
This correction and removal policy is live and confirmed operable.
The EFF relationship is established and the legal posture — including the three-class publish model — has been reviewed.