Phone Cameras and Apps Help Speed Calls for Police Reform

The video of the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a white police officer in South Carolina is seen by some advocates of police reform as evidence of the rising power of technological weapons in their fight. That includes the smartphone camera, and with it, a growing number of apps produced by activists that streamline the process of capturing and broadcasting videos of police interacting with citizens. “A lot of times, until these videos show up, the officer is going to walk,” said Darren Baptiste, the creator of Cop Watch, an iPhone app that automatically begins recording when you tap its icon and automatically uploads the video to YouTube when the recording is stopped.

Though it is only the latest in a string of cases in which amateur photography has been used to document officers’ use of force, the South Carolina shooting demonstrates the power of citizen-captured video in the most salient way. When it comes to citizen-captured video, there are few questions regarding legality, said Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association. Mr. Osterreicher said that he talked to people on a weekly basis who had been told by police to stop recording their activities. In almost all cases, the police are wrong to do so.