Since its Nov. 13 debut here, “Mobile Justice” has been downloaded 1,200 times with 100 videos sent to the organization, said Ben Bowens, an ACLU of Pennsylvania spokesman.
The software, available for free download through the App Store (iPhone) and Google Play (Android), has three functions:
- “Record” captures audio and video files and automatically sends them to the ACLU, storing the video even if it’s later deleted on the device.
- “Witness” broadcasts a user’s location, notifying others using the app of a police interaction nearby.
- “Report” allows users to send incident details directly to the ACLU with or without visual documentation.
“There are going to be [situations] in which it exonerates the police, and other cases in which it’s pretty damning,” said Witold “Vic” Walczak, legal director of ACLU of Pennsylvania. “Those videos are often the best and only evidence of what really happened.”
The app was developed by Jason Van Anden, a New York City artist and software developer, as an effort to capture unlawful stop-and-frisk encounters with New York City police. “Mobile Justice” is now available in 18 states, including Minnesota, where downloads soared after the Nov. 15 shooting of an unarmed black man by a Minneapolis police officer, Mr. Bowens said.
The app in Pennsylvania came partly in response to a series of cases in which the ACLU alleged retaliation by Philadelphia police officers against those who watch or record police activity.
In September, the ACLU filed a lawsuit on behalf of three Oakland residents who said a Pittsburgh policewoman verbally abused them, threatened to arrest one of them for trying to record a confrontation and then filed false charges of disorderly conduct against them after they made formal complaints about her.
A Pittsburgh police spokeswoman said the bureau would want to review the app before commenting. But in an email, police Chief Cameron McLay wrote generally about his thoughts on citizens filming police encounters.
“We, the police, are fully accountable for our actions, and as long as members of the public are not interfering with police operations, videotaping us doing our work is entirely lawful and acceptable,” he said. “Video cameras are everywhere, and that is okay.”
He said he supports equipping officers with body-worn cameras “on this same logic.”
“The cameras allow better evidence to be gathered about police/citizen interactions, and have been shown to have a civilizing impact on citizen and police behavior. … ,” he wrote. “Our goal is to improve public trust and to ensure the best possible evidence is available in our investigations; it matters not who owns the camera.”
Chief McLay halted an expansion of body-worn camera use in February while state legislators considered wiretap law revisions.
So far, no reports made by using the app in Pennsylvania have prompted further action by the ACLU. (Some have been test videos or recordings from app trolls.) But Mr. Bowens said he views it as a personal protection tool.
“Everybody should have it,” he said. “Hopefully nobody ever has to use it.”
©2015 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
