By Allison Bazzle
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
A new cell phone application is putting police accountability directly into the hands of Maryland citizens.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland (ACLU), a non-profit civil rights organization, released the Mobile Justice app on Nov. 13. With the app, citizens can record police interactions from their mobile devices and send them to the ACLU.
Brittany Oliver, the communications and outreach associate at the ACLU of Maryland, said the push for the app in Maryland was a result of reoccurring police brutality stories.
“Throughout the country a lot of the police brutality stories and cases have been coming up more and more,” Oliver said. “The purpose for creating the mobile justice app is just so that it can allow people to feel comfortable with where their video goes when they are recording police interactions.”
Recording a police interaction with the app works the same way as when a person is taking a video with their phone.
When a person’s completes recording, a form comes up on the screen asking for information about the person’s location, times, and contact information. If the person is in a tense situation, the video can be sent without filling out the form.
After hitting send, the video goes directly to the ACLU’s legal department where it stays safe until someone is able to view it, Oliver said.
According to Oliver, the app is especially convenient in unplanned or tense situations.
“The Mobile Justice app is very helpful,” Oliver said. “Say, for example, your phone drops and it damages, or you’re outside in the rain and the rain damages your phone, or if an officer comes towards you and wants to grab your phone, even if you shake the phone the video still comes to us.”
The legal program administrator for the ACLU, Amy Cruice, said that the witness function on the app is another helpful feature.
“The witness function allows you to get an alert if someone is recording the police in your vicinity,” Cruice said.
Oliver thinks that the app will help police brutality issues by holding police officers accountable and by helping to fix the relationship between communities and officers.
“I hope that it makes police be on their best behavior, knowing that the video someone is taking might be automatically sent to our legal department,” Cruice added.
The app is an educational tool as well. According to Oliver, the ACLU will use the app to send notifications to users about their rights when interacting with or filming the police. Users will also get information about their First Amendment rights.
Elise Armacost, who is the director of media and communications for Baltimore County police, said that the police department recognizes and respects the citizen’s right to record police activity.
“Chief Johnson and Baltimore County Police Department believe that the key to accountability, more important than recordings, is development of a law enforcement agency that respects the people it serves, holds its personnel to high standards and strenuously investigates controversial interactions between police and citizens,” Armacost said.
An officer for the Harford County Police Department, Sgt. Shawn Craig, also supported the app. “I welcome anyone who wants to record interactions and would be more than happy to wear a body camera,” Craig said.
Craig said that often police officers are falsely accused of things like police brutality and theft due to a few “bad apples” in the police force.
“There are hundreds of thousands of officers across the nation, a majority of which are honest hard working human beings that risk their lives on a daily basis to the communities they serve,” Craig said. “Unfortunately, the bad apples, which are corrupt officers or those that used poor judgment, are usually the main ones the media focuses on leaving a general feeling of distrust.”
Craig believes the majority of police interactions that the app captures will be routine, legal interactions.
“The few bad apples the app catches will provide the system of checks and balances the ACLU is focusing on providing a specific deterrence,” Craig said. “This would also provide a general deterrence to the police profession as a whole.”
Oliver said there were about 1,000 downloads on the day the Mobile Justice app was launched.
In the years to come, Oliver hopes that people will get more comfortable with knowing their rights. She also hopes the app will encourage both the officer and the citizen to know that an incident is being recorded and to act accordingly.
“We definitely don’t think that this app is the answer to all the problems,” Oliver said. “But what we do know is that knowledge is power, and that this app is a tool that can be used to further advance these efforts.”