Press Release

For Immediate Distribution

Alan Brantley
abrntley@stanford.edu
Roscoe Harris III
roscoeh3@stanford.edu
Cameron Buzzell
cam14@stanford.edu
Dalyn Wade-Perry
dalynwp@stanford.edu

STANFORD SENIORS SEEK TO LEVERAGE CROWDSOURCING TECHNOLOGY TO TACKLE POLICE TRANSPARENCY WITH NEW DASHCAM APP

Their ambitious approach seeks to subsidize 500,000 dash cams in cars over five years.

Seniors studying Product Design at Stanford’s School of Engineering have announced an innovative new platform designed to stream traffic stops live to the web. StopWatch is crowdsourcing platform for streaming, watching, and analyzing police interactions. The integrated system will incorporate dash cams with streaming capability, cell phones, and a mobile app to collect records of police interactions.

In 2020, 1127 people died in police custody. Of those cases, only sixteen resulted in criminal prosecutions, only eight of which involved video evidence. This figure is rather astounding considering the ubiquity of police body-worn cameras, dash cams, and cell phone cameras.

But stopWatch is not just another dash cam app. It gives its users the option of making the videos public to create a centralized cop-watching community.

“Videos about police misconduct are already available but only get traction with the public if the media makes the select few go viral. With stopWatch, we're trying to allow for all videos to hold the power of change." said Cameron Buzzell, co-founder of stopWatch.

The founders hope that by getting more eyes on more stops, popular momentum will build upon public pressure to impose much-needed reforms in policing accountability.

The platform will allow anyone with a camera to stream or upload videos of police interactions directly to the web using cellular data. Visitors to the site can watch live or on-demand and will have the opportunity to contextualize the event by relaying what happened during the interaction and when. The data we collect will empower advocates and lawmakers with the information they need to enact effective legislative reform.

“I believe that if stopWatch is well received and engagement is high, we could see the systemic and legislative change we long for. With millions of people uploading and classifying what happens in police stops across America we can get a better picture of what’s going on with policing in our neighborhoods,” said Roscoe Harris, co-founder of stopWatch.

They hope to subsidize 500,000 streaming dash cams over the next five years. To reduce costs, they will employ blockchain encoding that costs pennies on the dollar when compared to traditional hosting. For them, technology offers a unique opportunity.

“It’s abundantly clear that local, state, and federal officials have failed to hold departments accountable,” said Alan Brantley, co-founder of stopWatch. “We’ve decided to leverage technology to do the work governments and regulatory agencies refuse to do,” he added.

StopWatch will incorporate as a 501 C nonprofit.

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