The Mobile Justice New Mexico app is a tool that lets New Mexicans use their smart phones to record police or Border Patrol encounters and file reports of law enforcement misconduct. The app is a project by the ACLU of New Mexico that aims to empower community members by turning the technology we carry in our pockets into to powerful tools for law enforcement accountability and community safety.

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What does the Mobile Justice New Mexico App do?

The Mobile Justice New Mexico App has four basic functions:

• RECORD AND INCIDENT: After you finish recording it is automatically saved to your phone and a copy is uploade directly to a secure ACLU server. Even if a police officer grabs your phone and deletes the footage, your recording is safe with the ACLU.
• FILE A REPORT: If you witness police misconduct, you can use the app to file a report directly with the ACLU.
• WITNESS AN INCIDENT: With the location services turned on, other app users will be informed when an incident is being filmed nearby. Two sets of eyes are better than one, and the app helps connect civic minded people to hold police accountable in real time.
• KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: The App includes some basic guidance on your rights when recording law enforcement officers on public property while they execute their duties. This section is for general education only, and is not intended to be specific legal advice.

Why does this app exist?

Over and over again, we have seen how important video recording technology is to holding law enforcement officers accountable. Without video evidence we would have never have known the full picture of what happened in the Albuquerque foothills the day police shot and killed homeless camper James Boyd. Without bystander cell phone footage we would have never seen officers choke the life out of unarmed Eric Garner on the streets of Long Island, or witness what really happened the night Customs and Border Protection officers beat and tased Anastasio Hernandez Rojas into a coma that resulted in death.

Officer-worn cameras are an important part of the solution when it comes to reducing police brutality, but we know that all too often this technology falls short of its potential. Officers neglect to turn on their cameras, recording equipment malfunctions, footage is mysteriously lost, and sometimes the angle of the recording gives an incomplete accounting of the incident. By empowering community members to  responsibly and legally record officers, we provide an extra layer of accountability and protection for both officers and the communities they serve.

The Mobile Justice New Mexico app and our border communities

The ACLU Mobile Justice New Mexico app has special potential to make an impact in our state’s border communities. The U.S. Border Patrol is part of the largest law enforcement agency in the country and operates with a shocking lack of oversight and accountability. The agency claims extraordinary authority to operate 100 miles away from the nearest international border and beyond, regularly engages in racial profiling, and has a record of violence that has left at least 40 people dead—some of whom were unarmed children. No Border Patrol agent involved in these deaths has yet been publicly disciplined.
A report by the ACLU of New Mexico uncovered evidence that Border Patrol agents in New Mexico:

• Abuse innocent residents who are doing nothing more than going about their daily lives.
• Racially profile innocent border residents, making our communities less safe and sowing mistrust in the community.
• Put the health, safety, and dignity of border residents at risk by stopping ambulances and patrolling through health centers in violation of their own policy.

Border residents should never have to live with the constant fear of mistreatment and discrimination by law enforcement. Our border communities are safe and diverse communities where racial profiling by Border Patrol has undermined trust and ignored our constitutional rights and values. The Mobile Justice New Mexico app is one way that New Mexicans can document harassment and abuse by Border Patrol and help hold agents accountable.

LAS CRUCES, NM—Today, Commissioner Kerlikowske announced additional phases to further study the use of body-worn and other camera technologies at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The announcement follows the conclusion of a feasibility study, which tested body-worn cameras in both training and operational environments for all CBP component agencies and included field-testing by the El Paso Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol.

“CBP, our nation’s largest law enforcement agency, is in a deep accountability crisis with an urgent need for systemic cultural changes,” stated Vicki Gaubeca, director of the ACLU of New Mexico Regional Center for Border Rights. “Every day CBP drags its feet, they enable Border Patrol agents to abuse their power, profile residents, and kill unarmed civilians in incidents that to date have been shrouded in secrecy and offend American values of equality and justice.”

Where similar records of abuse to CBP’s have shown up in state and local police agencies, the U.S. Department of Justice has often intervened and struck legal agreements to force reforms. There are at least 42 families who have lost loved ones in CBP deadly-force incidents since 2010, several of which are known to the public only through cellphone videos. In this context, Commissioner Kerlikowske’s hesitant announcement of another incremental stage of body-worn-camera testing is alarmingly unequal to the task and reinforces CBP’s harmful effort to play by different rules than police.

“Based on its record of unaccountable abuses, CBP has not earned any benefit of the doubt in moving hesitantly on body-worn-camera deployment,” said Peter Simonson, executive director of the ACLU of New Mexico. “There is an urgent need for CBP to adopt cameras widely within a strong privacy framework, in order to begin rebuilding trust with border communities. Some of the worst CBP uses of force were, fortunately, recorded by members of the public; cameras would undoubtedly have captured more abusive conduct. CBP is dangerously overdue in catching up with this and other best law-enforcement practices.

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Flashbang grenade injures and traumatizes children in Anthony, NM during FBI’s low level drug raid

ANTHONY, NM—Today, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico condemned the FBI’s use of military grade stun grenades against three sleeping children during a 2013 pre-dawn drug raid in Anthony, NM. The lawsuit filed yesterday on behalf of the children alleges that the FBI agents, with full foreknowledge that the children were almost certainly present and sleeping in the home at the time, blindly detonated multiple explosive devices inside, which inflicted shrapnel wounds and severe emotional trauma upon the sleeping children.

“It is unconscionable that federal agents would detonate military grade stun grenades in a room where they knew children were likely sleeping,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Richard Rosenstock. “You can’t imagine the terror those children felt when they woke to deafening explosions, blinding light, and searing pain as armed men charged into their home. It was cruel, unnecessary, and recklessly endangered the safety of three innocent children.”

The lawsuit states that FBI agents were executing a search warrant stemming from an investigation of the childrens’ father, Abel Romero Sr., who they suspected of being a street level drug dealer. Romero, who had sole custody of his three children, ages 9, 10, and 12 at the time, lived with them in a trailer home along with his mother, sister and stepfather. The complaint alleges that through conversations with informants and surveillance of the trailer, FBI agents were fully aware that minor children lived in the trailer, and made no attempt to determine where they slept before deploying explosives inside the home. Furthermore, the complaint alleges that Romero often left the trailer and could have easily been arrested away from the children before agents initiated a search of his home.

At approximately 5:00 AM on May 8, 2013, the SWAT Team defendants conducted a military style, no-knock entry into the trailer, using an explosive device to blow apart the living room door where the three children lay sleeping. The plaintiffs allege that agents then threw multiple stun grenades into the house, which detonated near the children. Ten-year-old plaintiff A.R. Jr., who was sleeping on a couch facing the door, received shrapnel wounds to his head and shoulder from either the door or the grenades.   Had he been sleeping on his opposite side, he would likely have been blinded or worse.  After the SWAT Team’s entry, Twelve-year-old plaintiff F.R. was made to exit the house barefoot over broken glass and shrapnel, cutting her foot. All three children suffered severe emotional trauma from the experience.

“These are the wages of the failed war on drugs and rampant police militarization,” said ACLU-NM Executive Director Peter Simonson. “This is not the first time that officers armed like soldiers have injured innocent, sleeping children with stun grenades during a low-level drug raid, and if we continue along our current course it won’t be the last. We must demand that our leaders treat drug use as a public health problem, rather than a war to be fought by militarized police with children as collateral damage.”

The lawsuit filed by Rosenstock seeks punitive damages on behalf of the plaintiffs for the physical injury and severe emotional trauma inflicted by the raid. 

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