Catch Bad Cops in Action with ACLU's New 'Mobile Justice CA' Police Recording App
Police brutality and abuse of authority – it has become the norm in the news and on YouTube, with stories of out-of-control cops doing everything from beating up homeless people to committing cold-blooded murder. In March, a group of LAPD officers shot and killed an unarmed, mentally ill homeless man in front of a large crowd.
Worst of all, in most cases the offending officers get off with a slap on the wrist or maybe a ruined career, but rarely do they have to endure any significant amount of jail time for their crimes against the public.
The good news is, mobile devices are ubiquitous in modern society, so any onlooker can instantly act as an eye witness on behalf of the entire world using nothing more than their smartphone.
The increased prevalence in civilian recording has sparked a debate as to whether police brutality is actually on the rise, or if it is simply receiving more attention in the media lately because more people are able to record it with their smartphones.
Unfortunately, many times officers will deliberately stop a person from recording, or take their phone from them, intentionally stopping the footage from being publicized.
ACLU's Mobile Justice App to the Rescue
To accommodate the rising awareness of police misconduct in California, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) just released a California version of their smartphone app called 'Mobile Justice CA', which can be used by citizens to record, automatically upload, and preserve videos of police offers abusing their authority.
Videos are automatically submitted to the local chapter of the ACLU, and then examined by lawyers to determine whether a due-process violation occurred. This can streamline the process of reporting violations to the ACLU, giving the average citizen the ability to quickly upload videos directly to their local ACLU office on-the-spot, as the offense is taking place, without having to compose an email or jump through other time-consuming tasks.
Here's what the Mobile Justice CA interface looks like:
Image Courtesy: KPBS.org
Preventing Forced Recording Interruptions
The app is split into three modules that make it easy to share and report incidents in just a few taps – a swiftness that is often much-needed in scenarios where the abusing officers try to destroy or take the recording device. The goal of the app is to make sure videos of police misconduct are uploaded before anyone has a chance to tamper with the video evidence.
LA Police Chief Charlie Beck has already acknowledged that the public has the right to record on-duty police officers as long as the recording is not interfering with the officers' duties. Hopefully the app will create some accountability in a field where over-policing, excessive use of force, and racial profiling are often overlooked and shrugged aside.
California the Sixth State to Get the App
Before today, the ACLU had already released a version of the Mobile Justice app for 5 other states - Oregon, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, and Nebraska. So far, the Mobile Justice CA app is available for free iOS in the Apple App Store, but will most likely be coming to the Google Play Store this week, as previous versions of the app have been available for both iOS and Android.
Here's the official trailer for the app from the ACLU of Southern California's YouTube channel:
