Lawyer’s free app battles carding
Legalswipe helps keep citizens informed of rights during interactions with police
For aspiring lawyer Christien Levien, police carding isn’t an abstract legal battle; as a racialized person of Caribbean descent, it’s something he’s had to deal with his whole life.
So instead of selling his services as a criminal defence lawyer, he’s giving them away free in the form of a smartphone app that informs people of their rights during an encounter with police.
“I’ve experienced being walked up to by cops, being questioned for no reason,” said the Brampton native.
“I’m definitely not the first, it happens all the time.”
When Levien graduated from the University of Ottawa’s law school last year, he decided to combine his legal education and understanding of technology to create an app that acts like a legal adviser in your pocket.
“I think officers take advantage of peo- ple’s ignorance,” he said. “It would have assisted me many times in being confident and stating what my rights were.”
Last week, Legalswipe was released for both iPhone and Android. Drawing from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s “know your rights” handbook, the app guides people through police encounters with taps and swipes.
Depending on whether the police officer is asking for your ID, wanting to search you or simply making conversation, the app refers to specific laws and sections of the Charter and suggests exact wording for responses.
The app also offers video recording and emergency message functions that can communicate with selected contacts when activated.
It’s designed to be fast and simple so that it can be used in real time during a police encounter, but Levien says the app’s real value comes before any tense situation.
“This is primarily a tool for legal education. I hope that people are educating themselves prior to any given interaction so they know what their rights are,” Levien said. “But I do believe that during an interaction, it is possible to tell an officer: ‘This is being recorded, so I expect that my rights will be respected.’ ”
Unlike similar apps, such as CopWatch, which films interactions with police and automatically uploads the video to YouTube, Legalswipe’s video function sends the video to the user’s Dropbox account and will email select emergency contacts when that happens, “so you can choose to share it or not,” he said.
Officially, the police are in favour of the app, saying anything that informs people of their rights is a good thing.
“It’s not going to change the way we operate,” said Toronto Police Service spokesman Const. Victor Kwong. “We’re doing the same thing right back.”
Cameras in squad-car interiors and on dashboards have been in place for years, and a recent pilot project has 100 officers wearing body cameras around the city.
People, however, should use their judgment when employing the app, especially in “fluid” situations, Kwong said. “If we’re investigating a gun call, this would not be an opportune time to pull out a phone,” he said.
The app has been endorsed by former Queen’s Park speaker Alvin Curling and activist/journalist Desmond Cole, who had long fought for an end to carding.
After launching last week, Legalswipe received lots of attention from across Canada and the United States and has started trending on Apple’s App Store. Its servers have become overwhelmed by the unexpected volume of downloads, prompting Levien to launch a crowdfunding campaign to get them up again and at some point expand the app to include other languages and maybe other fields, such as employment or tenant law.