The Mobile Justice app, which
can be downloaded free from the ACLU of Missouri website, has several
capabilities:
A "record" feature
allows citizens to capture a police interaction and send the file instantly to
the ACLU.
A "witness" feature
sends out a location alert to others, enabling them to come to the scene and
observe.
A 'report' feature makes it
easy to send an incident report to the ACLU.
The app also has a section
informing citizens on their rights during police stops.
ST. LOUIS COUNTY • People who
feel their rights are being violated by police will be able to record and
instantly send a video of it to the ACLU using a new smartphone app available
here.
It also permits the user to
summon others to the scene to observe, to file an instant complaint to the ACLU
and to review constitutional rights.
Jeffrey Mittman, executive
director of the ACLU of Missouri, said Thursday the idea is to help ensure that
police stops are conducted properly — and to provide evidence for court if
they’re not.
“We know most police are very
consistent in doing their jobs properly,” Mittman said at a press conference.
“But for those few bad apples, this puts them on notice.”
He said complaints of police
harassment have spiked significantly since the shooting of Michael Brown by
Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9, and resulting protests. But
the underlying issues aren’t new, he said, citing an annual state report that
suggests some police forces stop a disproportionate number of blacks.
“This is a problem throughout
our country that we all know about,” he said.
His organization joined ACLU
affiliates in three other states — Mississippi, Oregon and Nebraska — in the
app’s roll-out. It is currently available only for Android phones, with plans
to offer it ultimately for iPhones as well.
Mittman said instant
transmission of the video means an officer cannot just seize a phone and delete
it. But he urged people to obey if police order them to stop recording.
In a statement reacting to the
ACLU’s announcement, St. Louis County Police Sgt. Brian Schellman said his
agency “agrees with the ACLU that everyone should know what their rights are
when interacting with police, and this app is another way for them to do so.”
Ferguson and St. Louis police
did not respond to requests for comment.
This is the same technology the
ACLU used to address concerns of racial profiling in stop-and-frisk policing in
New York. The ACLU said that app has been downloaded more than 30,000 times
since its release in 2012. In the same time period, he said, street stops by
police declined by more than half.
Mittman said the announcement’s
timing is unrelated to an impending decision from a St. Louis County grand jury
on whether to issue any charges against Wilson. But if protests do erupt, as
many have suggested, he said he expects the new app to get heavy use.
Based on an ACLU suit, a judge
recently ordered the Missouri Highway Patrol and St. Louis County police to
stop arresting people who do not keep moving during demonstrations. On
Wednesday, the city of Ferguson agreed not to enforce the so-called
“five-second rule.”
The “failure to disperse”
charge authorities used applies “at the scene of an unlawful assembly, or at
the scene of a riot.” The ACLU argued that police were using it to quell free
speech.
“These violations of
constitutional rights must stop,” Mittman said.
The ACLU earlier reached a
federal court agreement with the same agencies over the right to record police
interactions. That suit was on behalf of a journalist with the Argus Media
Group who was ordered over a loudspeaker to stop filming Ferguson protests.
The agreement says public
events may be recorded “without abridgement unless it obstructs the activity or
threatens the safety of others, or physically interferes with the ability of
law enforcement officers to perform their duties.”
Many of the demonstrators have
used live streaming video and Twitter from their phones as a way to organize,
communicate and keep pressure on authorities.
Julia Ho, of Missourians
Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, a grass-roots group, said any tool that
helps connect protesters to legal advocacy is a plus.
“We definitely fully support
all the efforts of the ACLU, and more specifically, any tool that allows
grass-roots organizing to occur around police brutality,” she said.
They are not the only ones to
grasp the power of video. St. Louis County police have been spotted recording
the protests.
“Filming is a way our
department can hold everyone on scene accountable, police and citizens,”
Schellman said. “Oftentimes, videos used, such as Vine, are shown in quick
clips, with no context. Filming interactions between police and citizens helps
us put then entire scope of a contact between police and citizens in context.”
