BY JASON TASHEA
The grand jury tasked with
deciding whether to indict the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown heard
70 hours of testimony. The 60 witnesses and three medical examiners gave
conflicting accounts about Brown’s last minutes. Ultimately, the grand jury
opted not to indict. Their decision left many asking: What if there was a video?
What if there was better oversight of police misconduct? Was Michael Brown a
unique tragedy or part of a larger trend? The ACLU’s Mobile Justice App and
Five-0 are technologies that will hopefully help answer these questions and
protect communities from police misconduct.
Launched in November, ACLU
Missouri’s Mobile Justice App is a civil rights attorney, evidence collector
and homing beacon in one. Jeffrey Mittman, director of ACLU Missouri, says that
the Mobile Justice App will empower communities that often feel a sense of
resignation and defeat when it comes to interaction with the police. “Too often
we see complaints of misconduct against the police fall apart in court because
it’s the alleged victim’s word versus the police officer’s.”
While Congress debates funding
for police body cameras, Mittman hopes the Mobile Justice App will improve
citizens’ recourse with police now. Under the “Know Your Rights” tab, a user
can access a simple list of rights and decisions one can make during a police
confrontation. Users can record videos of their interactions with police, which
are then immediately uploaded to the ACLU Missouri’s server for review and
possible legal action. Already over 500 videos have been uploaded. The upload
is to safeguard against illegal confiscation of phones or deletion of videos.
Finally, the “Witness” feature informs others using the app that someone in
their vicinity is witnessing or involved in a confrontation, thus drawing more
eyewitnesses. Both the video and eyewitness feature are meant to bolster claims
of misconduct in court.
There are concerns, however,
about the real world limitations of this app. “There’s no clear training about
[the app]; pulling a phone out around a cop could get people shot,” says Shauna
Dillavou executive director of Community Red, a group promoting free speech and
activism through technology. Mittman was quick to acknowledge the safety
concern for users, which ACLU Missouri explains to their protest monitors.
Dillavou also thinks the app
falls short in organizing activists. “The [Mobile Justice App] doesn’t collect
the data or images to change the message around police misconduct.” The need
for messaging and a broader conversation is what drove three Atlanta teens to
create Five-0, a national venue for police and civilians to come together and
talk. “Our movement is Partnership Policing,” says Asha and Ima Christian, two
of the three siblings who created Five-0 last summer. Five-0, as opposed to the
Mobile Justice App, accomplishes both community-wide data collection and
reporting, and creates a platform for users to have an earnest discussion about
police interactions. Asha admits, however, that the reporting component is the
most used.
With Five-0, users can access
the “Know Your Rights” information and create an incident report like on the
ACLU’s app. Five-0 differentiates itself by promoting a conversation about
policing. “We want the community to talk to each other, [the app] let’s people
in the neighborhood know what’s going on.” This is critical to understand, Ima
Christian explains by example, if Eric Garner’s death was an isolated tragedy
or related to a chronic problem. By acknowledging trends, Asha Christian
argues, activists will be better armed to tackle systemic problems.
For the three siblings, this
project is as much communal as it is personal. “We have family members that had
negative interactions with police,” Asha Christian continued, “Most of them
didn’t want to follow up with the police. The one time they did there was no
resolution… We want to empower people.” Now, the siblings say, family and
friends that previously shrugged their shoulders at a negative interaction with
the police feel as if they have recourse and that their interaction, whether
good or bad, will be, at a minimum, a useful data point to show policing trends
in their community.
With already 12,000 downloads
and 6,000 active users, Five-0 is looking to improve user experience. Similar
to the ACLU app, Five-0 plans to create an emergency button, so during an
interaction with the police the user can immediately send a text to a list of
contacts with GPS coordinates. They also want to improve police involvement on
the app. Currently, the police can respond on Five-0’s message boards; however,
starting in 2015, Five-0 will launch in eight American cities with police
departments as partners to improve dialogue and efficacy in their communities.
Asha Christian believes that fostering this dialogue will improve
police-community relations. “What we’re doing is less expensive than body-cams,
and just as far reaching.”
Jason Tashea is a is a criminal
law and legal tech consultant and freelance writer. Follow him on Twitter
@jtashea.
