2015/05/04 – Police brutality? The ACLU of Mississippi has an app for that.

Today, the ACLU rolled out the iOS version of its Mobile Justice Mississippi app. The Android version went live last fall in Mississippi and several other states, including California, Oregon, Missouri and Nebraska.

Jennifer Riley-Collins, the executive director of the state ACLU chapter, called it an “important tool to hold Mississippi law enforcement agencies accountable for their actions.”

When users open the app, they get a warning advising them that they might want their phone to automatically enter lock mode if they record a police incident. The main screen allows users the option to record, witness and report instances of law-enforcement officers possibly violating individuals’ constitutional rights.

The recording feature lets people capture footage of police officers and themselves or others (and the app lets users stop and send the recording to ACLU officials by shaking their phone). When activated, the witness function will send users an alert during nearby police encounters. The reporting feature lets users send information about police encounters to the local ACLU.

The organization developed the service after a number of high-profile incidents of alleged police brutality, including the deaths of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y. A witness captured Garner’s death on video, and though it didn’t result in the prosecution of the officer who killed him, it did help raise awareness.

In the past year, videos have also surfaced of the police shooting of Walter Scott in South Carolina and, more recently, the arrest of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. While in police custody, Gray suffered a spinal-cord injury and died, which sparked days of protests. Six police officers have also been charged in connection with Gray’s death.

During the recent legislative session, lawmakers passed a so-called voyeurism bill that made it a felony to record individuals, which some civil-rights advocates feared was designed to prevent people from recording the police. However, Riley-Collins says the legislation, which Gov. Phil Bryant recently signed into law, deals only with recordings done with criminal lewd and lascivious intent and conduct in private spaces where individuals have an expectation of privacy.

“A citizen photographer capturing the actions of a police officer in conduct of his official duties in a public place where he should not have an expectation of privacy should not be deterred from using the app by this statute,” Riley-Collins said in an email to the Jackson Free Press.

Source: Jackson Free Press 

R.L. Nave