ACLU app takes aim at police accountability

The American Civil Liberties Union has launched a cellphone app that advocates hope will serve as another tool for increasing police accountability.

The nonprofit’s app joins a handful of others, such as Mobile Justice and Cell 411, designed for people to film or upload videos involving interaction with law enforcement. “ACLU Blue” will focus not just on exposing misconduct but on highlighting positive examples of community policing, officials said.

“There have been far too many incidents in this country and in this state of police interactions involving misconduct, abuse and tragedy,” said Terri Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas. “The ACLU Blue app is designed to continue the national conversation about policing. It encourages model policing by allowing users to show what policing should, and shouldn’t, look like.”

Houston Police Department officials said the trend of using smartphones and social media to document exchanges has little effect on the performance of officers in the field.

“People have been filming police officers for years,” HPD spokesperson Jodi Silva said. “And it hasn’t hindered or changed how we do our job.”

Positive policing not priority

The ACLU app provides information on what to do if stopped by law enforcement and a Know Your Rights information page when filming police or protesting.

ACLU volunteers vet each video uploaded by a user and pass it on to an ACLU staff member, who curate the videos published on the app and online.

One local activist thinks the app should do even more.

“I would suggest the ACLU go one step further and have a way for an ACLU lawyer to contact (the person) immediately if their rights are being violated and provide a way to represent the person,” said Quanell X, leader of the New Black Panther Party.

Highlighting positive policing is not a priority for Houston’s Black Lives Matter group, said cofounder Ashton Woods.

“Black Lives Matter Houston is not here to shed good light on police officers,” Woods said. “They should have been doing good in the first place.”

To record his interactions with police, Woods uses Cell 411 — an app that takes a photo with the front-facing camera if it detects a person attempting to interfere with the sharing of a video.

While Facebook Live and Instagram work well to expose the interaction, police can have the video taken down if it is considered evidence, he said.

Protester Emily Garcia — one of five people arrested at a Nov. 10 demonstration against Donald Trump — was charged with tampering with evidence by removing a body camera from a Houston Police Department officer. A video Woods took at the event allegedly showed an officer forcefully pulling Garcia from the sidewalk and did not show her removing any body camera. The video was admitted as evidence, and she was exonerated, he said.

“If we’re arrested, there tends to be a lack of evidence,” Woods said. “Having video is very useful in court.”

‘People will be watching’

Fellow Black Lives Matter activist Gregory Chatman was arrested last year at a downtown protest calling for the removal of former Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson. An HPD officer was allegedly throwing the group’s fliers in the trash when he approached Chatman.

“He was kind of antagonizing us,” Chatman said. “He picked me out of the crowd and told me to come over there and put my hands behind my back.”

Chatman was given a ticket but had it dismissed when the video of his interaction with the policeman was submitted in court.

Chatman agrees that cameras and having as many accountability apps as possible are good ways of holding police accountable but said he prefers Facebook Live for its instant reach to everyone in his online social circle. The 2016 death of Philando Castile at the hands of a Falcon Heights, Minn., police officer was streamed on Facebook Live by his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and triggered weeks of protests around the country.

“We should be making policewatching apps as widely available as possible,” Chatman said. “Because people will be watching.”