ACLU creates app for filming potential police abuse

Think the police are violating someone’s civil rights? Want to record it and keep the video on file? The ACLU of California has an app for that.

As protests over police violence spread across the country, the ACLU of California announced a new smartphone app Thursday that allows Californians to record videos of police officers they believe are violating civil rights and send them directly to a local branch of the group for review.

“We’ve seen incidents of uses of force, of police abuse that likely would have gone unnoticed but have instead become the subject of national attention because a member of the public pulled out a phone and started video recording,” said Peter Bibring, director of police practices at the ACLU of California.

Bibring pointed to now-infamous video incidents, such as one in April when a bystander took video of a police officer in South Carolina shooting an unarmed man, Walter Scott, to death as he fled. The officer who shot Scott was later charged with murder.

“Video is an enormously important part of documenting police misconduct and holding not just the individual officers accountable but our law enforcement institutions accountable,” Bibring said.

The group began developing the app before nationwide protests over police violence began last year after a police shooting in Ferguson. Mo., he said.

The app — which captures video and audio — works like this: Users can open the app, called Mobile Justice CA, hit a record button and start rolling a potential incident. Once the recording is stopped, the video goes directly to the local ACLU branch and is preserved. The app is key, Bibring said, because it allows the videos to be preserved on the organization’s servers even if the phone is destroyed or seized by law enforcement.

Hamed Aleaziz is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: haleaziz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @haleaziz