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In 2010, a 16-year old filming a police interaction on a Newark, N.J. city bus found herself removed from the bus, handcuffed and taken to a detention facility (first a juvenile one, then an adult facility).
Khaliah Fitchette's crime? Nothing.
Officers, called to the bus after a passenger fell from his seat, asked the University High School junior class president to turn off her phone, and when she refused, took her into custody. Eventually, police released Fitchette, but not before the erasing the footage from her cellphone and, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (ACLU-NJ), violating her First and Fourth Amendment rights.
This week, ACLU-NJ released Police Tape, a free app that records video and audio "discreetly, disappearing from the screen once the recording begins," according to the app description. Made by app developer Open Watch, Police Tape also includes legal information about citizens' rights when interacting with the police.
Since Fitchette's arrest, and in the wake of Occupy protests throughout the United States, reports increased about citizens being prevented from filming police interactions, and police confiscating phones and cameras and destroying the footage. Such police actions violate unlawful interference with, restraint of and retaliation against free speech (First Amendment) and freedom of expression, and unlawful seizure (Fourth Amendment).
Related: Red Tape Chronicles: 'First Amendment rights can be terminated': When cops, cameras don't mix
Last month, the New York Civil Liberties Union released Stop and Frisk, a similar free cellphone app meant for bystanders watching a police stop, not for those who are experiencing it. The app sends the recording and report to the civil liberties group, and shares the location of the police stop with users, as well as community groups.
Similar to Stop and Frisk, Police Tape for Android records video and audio, and "in addition to keeping a copy on the phone itself, the user can choose to send it to the ACLU-NJ for backup storage and analysis of possible civil liberties violations."
"This app provides an essential tool for police accountability,"?said ACLU-NJ executive director Deborah Jacobs said in a statement. "Too often incidents of serious misconduct go unreported because citizens don't feel that they will be believed. Here, the technology empowers citizens to place a check on police power directly."
In an interview with The Star Ledger, Chris Tyminski, longtime president of Policemen's Benevolent Association Local 183, which represents Essex County sheriff's officers, expressed mixed feelings about ACLU-NJ's?Police Tape app:
"Guys are basically told, conduct yourself as if you're always being recorded, that's the safest way," he said. However, he said, it's unfair when groups like the ACLU "judge a life or death split second decision that a cop makes, when they have days and days and roundtables to discuss what a cop should have done in those three seconds."
Police Tape is currently available for Android from at?aclu-nj.org/app?and through the Android app market, now called?Google Play. An audio version?for iPhones is scheduled for release later in July. ACLU-NJ explains how Police Tape works in the following video.
Helen A.S. Popkin writes about the Internet. Join her on?Twitter?and/or?Facebook.?Also,?Google+.
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