This new UK app lets public record and save footages of police encounters, counter racism

A free app has been designed in the United Kingdom that allows people to record encounters with police and save the footage directly to the cloud to ensure they have evidence of any unwarranted interactions. According to the Guardian, the app has been designed by a black criminal lawyer named Michael Herford, who himself has faced unfair use of stop and search by police. 

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This comes at a time when the issue of police brutality against people of colour has garnered a lot of attention after the brutal killing of an African-American man George Floyd by a Caucasian police officer. The incident came into the limelight because a bystander was able to record video footage, which later became viral and sparked protests across the world. 

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Herford said that when people see police approaching them they can press a button on their phone and start recording the encounter, the video footage of which will be uploaded to the cloud in real-time so that the evidence is preserved even if the phone is destroyed or confiscated. Herford said that this will provide people an opportunity to achieve justice in case they are unfairly targetted by the police. 

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Disparity between treatment of White & Black people

According to figures provided by the government of the United Kingdom, between April 2018 and March 2019, there were a total of 3,75,588 stops and searches in England and Wales. Most of these stops and searches were targetted towards the minority as data shows that there were only 4 stops and searches for every 1,000 White people, compared with 38 for every 1,000 Black people. 

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(Image Credit: AP)