The New York Civil Liberties Union today unveiled the "Stop and Frisk Watch" app that allows New Yorkers to monitor police activity and report NYPD officers who conduct unlawful stop-and-frisk encounters and other police misconduct.

"Stop and Frisk Watch is about empowering individuals and community groups to confront abusive, discriminatory policing," NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a statement. "The NYPD’s own data shows that the overwhelming majority of people subjected to stop-and-frisk are black or Latino, and innocent of any wrongdoing. At a time when the Bloomberg administration vigorously defends the status quo, our app will allow people to go beyond the data to document how each unjustified stop further corrodes trust between communities and law enforcement."

In February the NYPD released stop-and-frisk statistics to the City Council that revealed the highest number of stops ever recorded in one year. Out of 684,330 stop-and-frisk stops, 87% percent of those stopped in 2011 were black or Latino, and nine out of ten persons stopped were not arrested, nor did they receive summonses. An NYCLU analysis showed that black and Latino males between the ages of 14 and 24 accounted for 41.6 percent of stops in 2011, though they make up only 4.7 percent of the city’s population. The number of stops of young black men exceeded the city’s entire population of young black men.

The app includes a "Know Your Rights" section that instructs people about their rights when confronted by police and their right to film police activity in public. Stop and Frisk Watch is intended for use by people witnessing a police encounter, not by individuals who are the subject of a police stop.