New Jersey�s branch of the American Civil Liberties Union has taken its mission of policing the police to smartphones.

The ACLU has released an app called �Police Tape� that lets users secretly record police stops.

The ACLU�s Alexander Shalom said the app is easy to use.

�There�s really only three buttons that the user needs to deal with,� Shalom said. �There�s a know your rights button that educates the citizen about their rights when encountering police on the street, in a car, in their home or when they�re going to be placed under arrest, and there�s a button to record audio and a button to record video.�

Shalom hopes the app will deter police officers from misusing their power.

�You can think back to when Rodney King was beaten at the hands of the LAPD,� Shalom said. �For years, we�ve watched the police on video and that�s led to reforms and police accountability, but now that cellphones and smartphones are becoming more ubiquitous, people have this ability to videotape. It really is a cutting-edge tool to ensure accountability in the 21st century.�

The app lets users record audio and video discretely with a stealth mode that hides the fact that the recording is happening.

Shalom said officers would also have a harder time deleting the recorded incidents.

�Unlike a recording that�s just done in the standard camera or video mode on someone�s telephone, it�s a little more complicated to find these files and delete them. So it can theoretically be done but it would take a far more tech-savvy police officer to do it,� Shalom said.

Users can store the recording on their phones or send a copy to the ACLU-NJ for backup storage and analysis of possible civil liberties violations.

The app is currently available for Android users and a version for iPhones is in the works.

The New York branch of the ACLU released a similar app, called �Stop-and-Frisk Watch,� last month.

ACLU leaders said the only other branch with an app like this one is New York.

(Source: WCBSTV)