ACLU MN launches mobile app for police encounters

Thanks to the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, there is now a cellphone app that lets you record video of law enforcement activity and right away submit it to the local ACLU for review-just in case someone’s rights may have been violated. Micah McCoy, an ACLU spokesman, said that the app would salvage cell phone videos that cops delete from seized phones, as happened in an infamous 2014 DWI incident involving Albuquerque police officer Pablo Padilla.

The new app is being unveiled in up to ten states this month including Maryland, Virginia, Oregon, Mississippi, Nebraska, Missouri, and Washington D.C. The ACLU says the app is free and is joining similar apps already released in states such as NY and California.

But police say the app, called Mobile Justice MN, is troubling because it allows users to notify others when and where they are using the app, which could draw more citizens to an unsafe incident.

Another distinction between body-worn cameras and the app, Hopkins-Maxwell notes, is the fact that police recordings are subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, with a few exceptions. Even if the phone is destroyed or the video erased on the phone, the video will not be lost.

“This puts the power in the hands of individuals, as opposed to video that’s captured by police”. It will be available in 10 more states today.

For a sense of what law enforcement officers think about the new app, we talked to Jeff Hynes – he’s a former Phoenix police commander and now teaches at both Glendale Community College and ASU.

Nelson acknowledged video isn’t a cure-all – users could selectively film and not show full context of an incident – but it provides supplementary evidence to witness accounts and a powerful tool for citizens facing unfair treatment from law enforcement. For a witness to arrive on a scene, one app user must share his location, and another app user must agree to receive witness notifications and then travel to the site.

Both presidents of the Minneapolis and St. Paul police federations said their officers are not afraid of being recorded, but they are concerned about safety.

The Twin Cities police federations insist there is already plenty of oversight within law enforcement.

“The concerns over police practices, including racial profiling and excessive use of force, are very real for communities across the District”, said Monica Hopkins-Maxwell, executive director of ACLU-DC.

This Mobile Justice app is available in eighteen states. “We have to remember when police are recording people through body cams, they are government officials making a government document”. “From that standpoint, we welcome the new technology delivered thru this app”, he said.