Crime & Safety

ACLU App Promotes Police Accountability

New app, called Police Tape, records interactions with police.

A new app developed for the ACLU of New Jersey allows people to securely record and store their interactions with police, as well as provide legal information about citizens' rights when interacting with police, the civil liberties protection organization announced recently.

Called "Police Tape" the smartphone application was developed by OpenWatch and is available free of charge to Android users. A version for the iPhone is pending app store approval but should be available later this month.

"This app provides an essential tool for police accountability," ACLU-NJ Executive Director Deborah Jacobs said in a release. "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."

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According to the ACLU, the app records video and audio discreetly and is shielded from the screen once recording begins to prevent tampering by police attempting to delete the recording. The app allows users to save the recording to their phone and also send it to ACLU-NJ for backup storage. 

From the ACLU Police Tape release:

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The popularity of cellphones with video capabilities has raised legal questions about the rights of citizens to record in public. Fortunately, the courts have sided with citizens. In May 2012, a federal appeals court struck down an Illinois law that had made it illegal for citizens to record police officers on-duty. Also in May 2012, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice released a letter affirming the constitutional rights to record the police in public.  These two developments came on the heels of a landmark ruling in August 2011, which recognized the right of citizens to record police officers after a Massachusetts man in Boston Common was wrongfully arrested for filming an interaction with a police officer.

The Police Tape app is available for download at http://www.aclu-nj.org/yourrights/the-app-place. A how-to video created by the ACLU-NJ shows Lady Liberty as she goes through each step of the app as she records and uploads her own run-in with police, available for viewing at the ACLU-NJ website.


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