Teens Create “Five O” App to Report Police Brutality, Rate Officers

As more information comes out
surrounding the death of Michael Brown during an encounter with
police, it fuels more speculation. The failure of the Ferguson
Police department to
deploy body cams already reportedly in their possession, the
lack of dash cams in cop cars, the lack of communication with
Brown’s family about the circumstances surrounding his death all
contributed to protests that have been ongoing since the shooting
of Brown last Saturday. Police reportedly seized a cellphone from a
witness to the shooting who may have caught a portion of it on
film. That video has not been released by cops.

The ability to record cops while they’re on the job has become
more widespread than before with the ubiquity of cellphones in
modern society. Cops have resisted this, from
ignoring the law as written when violating bystanders’ right to
film their interactions to seizing cellphone video for evidence.
Yet videotaping cops is likely to exonerate them more easily in
certain situations as well. One study
found complaints about alleged police brutality down 88 percent
after the introduction of body cameras. Despite the laws protecting
it, residents’ right to film cops will only be as powerful as the
tools that can protect it.

Two teenagers in Georgia have created an app called “Five O”
that lets users report police brutality, and rate officers.

Via Business Insider:

Five-O lets users submit the details of any incident of police
abuse and rate the specific officer. The app also has community
boards for different counties so that users can communicate and
plan responses to any difficulties with local police.

The idea is to collect data that users can then bring to
community activists, the media, and other forms of law enforcement.
That way, it’s not just “he said, she said,” Caleb said.

And they’re hoping to illuminate both the negative and the
positive interactions users have with police officers. They want
the good examples to serve as motivation for officers to do
better.

As Apple trademarked, “there’s an app for that.” It wouldn’t be
surprising if eventually this app, or another like it, also
included the ability to upload images and video as they’re taken.
The teens, Ima Christian,16, Aisha, 15, and Caleb, 14, have their
own app development company, Pinetart Inc.