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Image via ACLU ©2015 Lalo Alcaraz
The body count of unarmed black men and women killed by the police continues to rise, and protests continue to break out across the country. One of the only solutions to racist policing and police brutality to gain any traction since the Ferguson protests last year is continual video recording of police officers. Today, two initiatives were announced that hope to put San Francisco police officers under a lot more video surveillance.
First, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee announced today that he will ask for $6.6 million in the next budget to fund body cameras for every SFPD officer. The money would also fund associated costs like software and video storage.
According to the
San Francisco Examiner, there is no set time-line for when the cameras will be deployed on officers on the street.
In a press release, the Mayor's office said that he is forming a working group with the police union, Office of Citizen Complaints, and others to develop the policy that will guide the use of the body cameras. Issues that have arisen for other police departments regarding body cameras include whether a police officer has the power to turn the camera on and off, who has access to the footage and when, and how to store the large amounts of data produced by the cameras.
Of course, police body cameras are in no way a fail-safe solution to police shooting investigations. When Yuvette Henderson was shot and killed by Emeryville police officers in Oakland earlier this year, one of the officers was wearing a body camera but
apparently did not turn it on until after the shooting.
That's part of the reason why the ACLU of California is today releasing a
new smart phone app designed to help civilians to record police activity and submit the video to ACLU affiliates if they think law enforcement officers are violating people's civil rights. The app is called Mobile Justice CA and is available for free on
Android or
iOS. According to the ACLU, video recorded with the app will be transmitted to the ACLU to be preserved "even if the user’s phone is later seized or destroyed."
The producers of the app hope that it will provide a layer of video accountability for police that isn't under the control of law enforcement agencies. That's important to Patrisse Cullors, one of the three founders of #BlackLivesMatter hashtag and the director of the Truth and Reinvestment Campaign at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, an Oakland-based group partnering with the ACLU to promote use of the app.
"Instead of continuing to rely on police and their body cameras," says Cullors, "this app serves as a kind of people's body camera and gives individuals who have been marginalized more agency and power."
