The LAPD versus the First Amendment
A smartphone app is threatening speed trap revenue, and the cops don’t want to take it any more.
Last month, my Mercatus Center colleague Brent Skorup published a major scoop: police departments around the country are scanning social media to assign people individualized “threat ratings” — green, yellow, or red. This week, police are complaining that the public is using social media to track them back.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has expressed concerns that Waze, the social traffic app owned by Google, could be used to target police officers. The National Sherriff’s Association has also complained about the app.
To be clear, Waze does not allow anybody to track individual officers. Users of the app can drop a pin on a map letting drivers know that there is police activity (or traffic jams, accidents, or traffic enforment cameras) in the area.
That’s it.
And police departments around the country frequently publicize their locations. They are essentially required to do so for sobriety checkpoints by Supreme Court order and NHTSA guidelines.
But in a letter to Google CEO Larry Page, Beck writes breathlessly that Waze “poses a danger to the lives of police officers in the United States.” The letter also (falsely) states that the app was used by Ismaaiyl Brinsley to kill two NYPD officers. The Associated Press notes that “Investigators do not believe he used Waze to ambush the officers, in part because police say Brinsley tossed his cellphone more than two miles from where he shot the officers.”
It’s somewhat rich of the LAPD to cite fear for its officers’ lives while the department is in possession of some 3408 assault rifles, 7 armored vehicles, and 3 grenade launchers.
In fact, what Waze poses a danger to is police department revenue. Drivers are using the app as a crowdsourced radar detector, as a means of avoiding traffic tickets. But unlike radar detectors, which have been outlawed in my home state of Virginia, Waze benefits from First Amendment protection.
The fundamental activity that Waze users are engaging in is speech. “Hey, there is a cop over there,” is protected speech under the First Amendment. As all LAPD officers must swear an oath affirming that they “will support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” it seems reasonable to expect the police chief not to stifle, by lobbying private corporations, the First Amendment rights of those citizens who choose to engage in this protected activity.
The Waze kerfuffle is a symptom of a longer-term breakdown in trust between police departments around the country and the publics they are sworn to protect and serve. This is a widely recognized problem, and some in the law enforcement community are working on strategies to remedy it.
But as long as departments continue to view the public as the enemy or even as a passive revenue source, not as the rightful recipients of their service and protection, we will continue to see the public respond by introducing technologies that protect users from the police’s arbitrary powers.
Fortunately, police complaints about Waze have backfired. Many smartphone users had no idea there was an app for avoiding speeding tickets until Beck and the Sherriff’s Association made it national news. As a result of the publicity, downloads of Waze have skyrocketed.
This is how the modern world works, and it gives me great hope for the future.
Eli Dourado is a research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and director of its Technology Policy Program. Follow @elidourado on Twitter.
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