Cell phone video & public-police relationship

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GUESTS: DAVID RUDOVSKY, JERRY RATCLIFFE, TIMOTHY B. LEE

Cell phone video footage captured then-Philadelphia Police Lt. Jonathan Josey striking a woman in the face at the street celebrations in North Philadelphia following September’s Puerto Rican Day Parade. When a Philadelphia judge acquitted Josey of assault, it set off many conversations about justice and the courts, including new questions about how the criminal justice and legal systems are and should be responding to the ubiquity of cell phones able to capture and share video documentation of potential criminal behavior. But the Josey case is just one of many controversial cases recently that have pivoted on cell phones and the cops. Civil liberties lawyers are suing Philadelphia police over another incident in which an observer was arrested after taking video of an officer arresting someone else, and the video was erased from his phone. Joining us to talk about how cell phone videos are affecting the police-public relationship are DAVID RUDOVSKY, renowned civil rights attorney and principal at the firm Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg; and JERRY RATCLIFFE, professor and chair of the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University, and a former London police officer. We’ll also explore the technological aspects of these cases with a call to TIMOTHY B. LEE, a Philadelphia-based reporter who covers tech policy for Ars Technica.

Photo by Flickr user Yuri Numerov

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