Rate your cop along with your lawyer and teacher

That’s what RateMyCop.com lets you do. If you’re curious, here’s one of many stories about the site.

Six months ago, Gino Sesto and the site’s other founder, Rebecca Costell, began sending letters to thousands of police and sheriff’s departments around the country requesting the names and badge numbers of officers. Based on the responses and information on department Web sites, they created a database of officers from more than 500 departments in every state except Maine, Rhode Island and Alabama. The site focuses on departments in major cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta and Miami. …

Users can search for officers by name, department or state and give them up to five stars based on professionalism, fairness and overall satisfaction during an encounter.

They can also leave comments.

So far, the site has more than 140,000 officers rated. About one-third of them are from the top three states of California, Texas and Florida. It all sounds constitutional and legal, according to Peter Keane, a constitutional law professor at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and a former police commissioner. But, he has his worries.

“This site could discourage contacts between police officers and members of the public,” he said. “You want police to have encounters to investigate and solve crimes.”

And, with that and other concerns in mind, two hosting companies have already cut ties with the website, citing public safety worries.

Frankly, I think the websites are being ridiculous. And, Sesto allows users to flag comments by other users they think inappropriate. And, as for Keane’s concern that serious complaints will get drowned out by trivial ones, well, that might or might not happen. In any case, it shines the light of transparency, as imperfectly as it may shine, on another portion of government.