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created 11 months ago | Tagged: |
Locke!
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The New York branch of the ACLU has big dreams for the newest piece in its crusade against stop- and-frisk, the New York Police Department’s practice of stopping young men — nearly always men, and nearly always minorities — and frisking them on the street in public. The NYCLU’s “Stop and Frisk Watch,” a smartphone app designed to let observers record and report stop-and- frisks they see on the street, is a “free and innovative smart phone application that will empower New Yorkers to monitor police activity and hold the NYPD accountable,” per its description online.
The app is only on Android phones right now — with an iPhone version due later — in an effort to reach those who are regularly stopped-and- frisked. “We chose Android first because the demographic who gets stopped and frisked in New York City is the same demographic as who's on Android — 86 percent of people stopped are black or Latino,” NYCLU Communications Director Jen Carnig said. Stop-and-Frisk Watch works like this: A bystander with the app sees a stop-and-frisk happening on the street and triggers the app, which starts recording video. After the video recording is over, the user fills out a survey about the stop-and-frisk, which is sent to the NYCLU. A “Listen” feature also alerts users if people are being stop-and-frisked nearby. Can an app, particularly one that depends on bystanders to care enough to download it to their phone and then put themselves in a position to record an incident really reduce stop-and-frisks, or even lead to more people reporting them, when there are hardly any official avenues to do so?
