Police brutality is not a myth. Today
we all witness violence inflicted by those in charge of protecting us.
Images of aggressive police behaviour flood the media, cries for an end
to racism and impunity still remain in the limbo of government
decision-making.
We need to act. NOW.
ObsPol ?
The Police Violence Observatory, or ObsPol, is a non-profit, informal network of citizens in various countries which remains committed to end violence among the police, remove their impunity to justice, expose widespread corruption even among highest ranking officers, put an end to the protective shield of politicians, and put a stop to the trauma and shame inflicted on victims and their families.
Worldwide stories of violence are erupting as massive protests take place across the globe in solidarity with the dire situations of African Americans and other ethnic minorities in the USA, which was crudely demonstrated by the tragic death of George Floyd. Unseen social movements and demands for justice fuel an already widely spread resentment towards the police who are seen as curbing freedom of expression. As police wrath increases, we are confronted with government officials making swift declarations and timid legal changes.
We believe all aggression should be increasingly documented, statistics collected and presented to governments, laws amended and civil liberties protected. Citizens from all walks of life should take part in future debates, abusers must be convicted and sentenced.
The first initiative of the ObsPol project began in Belgium in 2013
With minimal resources and a small team of dedicated activists, the website provided useful information to victims of and witnesses to police violence, and permitted them to safely tell their story through an online questionnaire, find links to various material and resources, and have their testimonies published. The success and reputation of this tool were measured by the hundreds of stories that flowed in over the years, in spite of little publicity surrounding this initiative…
But Belgium is just one spot on the map of police brutality
This website is intended to broaden the scope of the study, so as to encompass all countries and survey the phenomenon on a worldwide basis, to further provide an opportunity for all victims to speak up, bring about an end to this injustice, and to host new collectives elsewhere that would engage in building their own websites centered on police violence and brutality.
You may be interested in setting up your own group in your country, we can provide you with:
a subdomain on our mutualized server (e.g. uk.obspol.org, spain.obspol.org, usa.obspol.org etc.)
a WordPress template that you can tweak to feature content specific to your country
an IT support for installation and maintenance
a centralized database to record testimonies in your country via our online questionnaires @ voices.obspol.org
a growing library of legal documents, court judgements, analyses, reports videos etc.
Networking tool to organize with groups in other countries and the support of experts in the legal, social, psychological and activist fields
Let’s organise and heal the social cancer of police brutality : JOIN US NOW !
Contact us @ contact@obspol.org !
ObsPol needs help to translate our online questionnaires in more languages !
Our online questionnaires @ voices.obspol.org are currently available to victims of and witnesses to police violence in Dutch, English, French and German.
In order to obtain further testimonies from victims and witnesses in their native language, we need help with translating the forms into Arabic, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish.
– Download the translation files by clicking on your language below for either form. Each file contains a French and an English version as a reference. If you’d like another reference language (Dutch or German), let us know @ contact@obspol.org
Translate the text strings in this language
Return the translated file to us @ contact@obspol.org
