Activists working to live broadcast police actions

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/08/activists_working_to_live_broadcast_police_actions



KEEPING WATCH: The website CopBlock.org, founded by Ademo Freeman, above, of New Hampshire, is creating an app that would live-stream videos of police encounters with civilians.

Activists working to live broadcast police actions
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
Matt Stout

A national cop-watching website with New England roots says it’s working on a new app that would broadcast citizen cellphone videos of police encounters as they happen — a new platform experts say could expand, and complicate, how the public records officers at crime scenes.

“There have been too many times a cop (sees a phone recording video and) says, ‘That’s evidence, I’m going to take it.’ And then they hold it while you jump through legal hoops. ... That isn’t possible with live streaming,” said Ademo Freeman, 33, a New Hampshire resident and founder of CopBlock.org.

“You can see these things evolving in the private sector. You can see new media producing that content, adapting it and utilizing it,” Freeman said. “That’s the benefit of live streaming. You can get the information out really quickly.”

Freeman, whose legal name is Adam Mueller, said he’s working on an app that could take so-called live-streamed video, plug it into a server at CopBlock.org and blast it out on blogs and elsewhere throughout his site, which draws more than 3 million page views a month.