OfficersEmployersAgenciesEveryone
Agency review guidelines
Agency reviews help officers compare departments before they apply or go lateral. Every review is written by a verified officer and checked by a moderator before it appears.
Who can write a review
- Only verified officers (confirmed email, two-step login on). You get one review per agency, which you can edit or delete any time from your dashboard.
- Only agencies with a profile on SecondWatch Careers can be reviewed.
- Write about an agency you work for or have worked for. We can't confirm where every reviewer worked. If your profile lists a different agency, we tell the moderator, but that doesn't block your review.
What you rate
You give 1 to 5 stars for overall, pay & benefits, leadership, work-life balance & overtime, morale, lateral-friendliness and training & equipment. You also write pros and cons, say whether you're a current or former employee, and pick a range for how long you worked there.
How your identity is protected
- Reviews show as "Verified officer", with no name, initials, rank, unit or exact dates. The agency can never see who wrote a review, and reviews aren't part of any employer export.
- Until an agency has at least 5 published reviews, we don't show when reviews were written, and the order is mixed. That makes it harder to work out who wrote what. After that, we show month and year only.
- Average ratings appear only once an agency has at least 3 published reviews.
- Don't include details only you would know (a specific incident, your shift or unit). They can identify you even without your name.
What's not allowed
- Names or descriptions of individual people. Talk about leadership, policies and culture, not about "Sgt. Smith".
- Personal information: phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, badge numbers.
- Threats, harassment, hate speech or profanity.
- False statements of fact. Share your honest experience and opinions. Don't state rumors as facts.
- Confidential or law-enforcement-sensitive information (investigations, tactics, security details).
- Reviews written for pay or other rewards, reviews of your own agency written to promote it, or reviews from someone who never worked there.
- Links and advertising.
Our system flags possible problems automatically, and a moderator reads every review and every edit. A review can be approved, held or rejected. If it's rejected, we email you the reason so you can fix it. Editing a published review hides it again until it has been re-approved.
Reporting a review
Use ⚑ Report under any review. A moderator looks at every report, and reported reviews can be put back on hold. Reports don't need an account.
Agency responses
The agency's verified recruitment account can post one public response to each review. Responses are moderated too, and they must follow the same rules. In particular, they must not guess at or reveal who wrote the review.
We never remove or change a review because an agency paid or asked for it. Negative reviews that follow these guidelines stay up. Agencies can't pay to hide reviews, and advertising on SecondWatch Careers doesn't affect reviews.