Want To Record A Police Beatdown? There’s An App For That

Concerned about police activity in the neighborhood? Worried about the cops beating up friends and relatives, or just want to take a stand for social justice?

There’s an app for that.

The American Civil Liberties Union of California released a smart phone app last week that will allow users to video police activity and then immediately upload it to ACLU servers.

The video footage will be kept intact even if the cell phone is confiscated or destroyed.

The app also sends an alert to nearby users, so they can go to that location and create their own video records of the possible police misconduct.

Peter Bibring, director of police practices at the ACLU of California, told the San Francisco Chronicle, the app is unique because it can preserve the video even if police officers seize the phone.

“We’ve seen incidents of uses of force, of police abuse that likely would have gone unnoticed but have instead become the subject of national attention because a member of the public pulled out a phone and started video recording. Video is an enormously important part of documenting police misconduct and holding not just the individual officers accountable but our law enforcement institutions accountable.”

To use, simply pull out a smartphone and hit the Mobile Justice CA button to start rolling film. Once the recording stops, the video is sent directly to the local ACLU branch where it will be preserved no matter what happens to the phone.

The launch of the Mobile Justice CA app follows the high profile death of Freddie Gray, an African American man who died in police custody, and the civil unrest in Baltimore.

There have also been several other people killed by police that have been in the news this year.

Three people are killed every day by police officers nationwide, according to the Inquisitr. In 2014 police officers killed 1,029 citizens and most of those deaths had no video recording to stand witness to their deaths.

The Mobile Justice CA video app took three years to get to California and is already available in New York, Missouri, and Mississippi, according to Reuters.

After the videos are uploaded to ACLU servers, the group will review them with priority given to those that arrive with a written report, another feature of the app.

The ACLU warned people using the Mobile Justice CA app to warn police officers they were reaching for a phone so it wouldn’t be mistaken for a gun.

[Photo by Scott Olson/ Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]