Stop-and-frisk app designed to track controversial NYPD policy

Ryan Devereaux in New York
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 6 June 2012 20.41 BST

Civil liberties campaigners have unveiled a mobile phone app that will allow users to document police stops in New York and immediately submit them for review.

The New York Civil Liberties Union released the app following months of growing criticism surrounding the NYPD's practice of stopping and frisking hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers each year.

NYCLU leaders said the app, which is available on Android with an iPhone version out later this summer, would help the organization document the growing number of controversial police stops.

Last year close to 700,000 people were questioned on the city's streets. The vast majority were black or Latino and nearly nine out of ten had committed no crime. This year the department is on pace to shatter that record. Last month a federal judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit accusing the police of unconstitutional, racial profiling through stop and frisk.

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