Cop Watch

Copwatch (also Cop Watch or Cop-Watch) is a network of activist organizations, typically autonomous and focused in local areas, in the United States, Canada and Europe that observe and document police activity while looking for signs of police misconduct and police brutality. They believe that monitoring police activity on the streets is a way to prevent police brutality.[1] The stated goal of at least one Copwatch group is to engage in monitoring and videotaping police activity in the interest of holding the police accountable in the events involving assaults or police misconduct.[2] They also develop theoretical and practical approaches to security and justice structures to replace the police (abolitionism). They practice an intersectional critique of capitalism and analyze crime as a consequence of social problems that cannot be fought by surveillance and punishment. Therefore, they demand social solutions especially in relation to violence in structural power relations (sexist, racist, anti-Semitic violence), an accepting drug approach as well as material security.[3] Copwatch was first started in Berkeley, California, in 1990.[4]

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