About Us

Stop and Search is a topic that is under constant scrutiny and public review. The "Stop and Search UK app" hopes to bring transparency and fairness to the stop and search procedure. The app was created by three young males from inner London who have all experienced being stopped and searched several times, Aaron Sonson, Satwant Singh Kenth and Gregory Paczkowski.

Short Overview of the App

The app allows the user to view what their rights are in a stop and search situation and give feedback on their encounters with the Police quickly and easily using a medium that for the average person is easily accessible at all times - a mobile phone.

The app is divided into 3 key Features

1) Know Your Rights -

Shows why you may have been stopped and searched, what the correct procedure is and what your rights are in a stop and search situation.

Designed in an interactive comic book format to make it easy to read and attractive on the eye.

What's the point of Know Your Rights?:

- The aim of the Know Your Rights section is to add clarity to the stop and search procedure. It also aims to alleviate the feelings of confusion and frustration innocent people can feel if they are stopped and searched and do not know their rights.

- Typically know your rights information presented on conventional websites is difficult to process and leaves people feeling disengaged. The Stop and Search apps Know Your Rights section displays this information in an easy to understand and digestible format.

2) Upload & Rate Your Experience -

Upload how you were treated by the officer you were stopped and searched by using a set criterion of questions such as: How much respect do you feel you were shown? And how cooperative do you feel you were? Your age, sex and ethnicity.

Upload your experience along with the badge/shoulder number of the officer you were stopped and searched by and the number of the stop and search slip.

Add any additional comments relevant to the stop and search.

You can manually input where the stop and search happened or automatically (using GPS) tag that the stop occurred at your current location.

Checklist (*optional and part of Uploading experience)

Takes the user through the stop & search procedure step by step in the form of yes or no questions such as, did the officer tell you their name? Were you offered a stop and search slip? This will further allow the user to know if the officer is carrying out the procedure correctly.

• What's the point of the upload section?
• - This data will then be used to show how people feel about stop and searches in different areas, also giving a detailed picture of what people experienced.
• - It also means that police officers can be held more accountable or rewarded if their badge numbers are recorded with positive or negative data.
• - It is no longer a legal requirement to record stop and accounts in many parts of the UK. We feel that there should still be an easy way for people to record this information so it can be analysed and reported about.
• - Although there are a lot of people who have had bad experiences with the police, a lot of them find it counter intuitive to then complain directly to the police. This app gives people a new way to safely upload their experience (anonymously) to a 100% independent group who can then help to build a picture of how the silent majority feel.

3) View Local Stops

View where other people in your community have been stopped and searched and see how they rated their experiences on a map.

• What's the point of the Viewing local stops?:
• - We believe this data should be free for the public to view, so we've added in a feature where people can see other stops that have occurred in a 10mile radius of their location.
• - We believe displaying where other people have been stopped and searched in the community will further increase accountability. For example if there are a high number of stops on a particular street this can be brought to the attention of the local Police force with a view to seeing if these stop & searches were justified.
• - We've limited the experiences shown, to the local area (using GPS). This way people do not have to worry about high internet usage. We will be releasing the data from the app for free via our site at www.stopandsearch.org (no personal data is collected or will be shown)

Key aspects to note

• The app is 100% independent, made by young people affected by stop and searches and are trying to address the situation in a positive way. No personal data is obtained from the user. Each upload is anonymous.
• The data obtained from the app will be freely available to view on the Stop & Search App Facebook page or website.
• Originally a prototype version of the app was released in 2010 on the Android platform, however the main phone young people (the demographic stopped and searched the most) use is blackberry, so the creators spent time working to get the app re - created for use by Blackberry users. The original android app was created as part of an Apps for Good course - http://appsforgood.org/apps/stop-and-search/ also by the same creators.
• Since 2010 the creators have received £2,500 in funding from the charity Unlimited, the remainder of the time and cost involved with creating the app has come out of their own personal expenditure.
• They have received assistance from Apps for Good and RIM. Research in Motion helped to develop the creation of the Blackberry app along with the Interchange Group.
• The developers are currently looking for sponsorship.

About the Creators

Aaron, Satwant and Greg first started working together as a group on the Apps for Good project which was piloted in South London at the High Trees Development Trust in 2010. The course was all about solving social problems young people were passionate about with mobile apps. Out of 21 possible problems the group wanted to solve, stop and search was the one that they were most passionate about and seemed the best fit for the mobile app realm. They believe the Stop & Search App has the potential to bring more fairness, accountability and transparency to the Stop and Search procedure and be the voice of all innocent people stopped and searched in the UK.

You can contact them at stopandsearchapp@gmail.com

Website coming soon with data www.stopandsearch.org

Download the App on Blackberry

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/STOPnSEARCHapp

Learn about how we first started: http://appsforgood.org/apps/stop-and-search/

Stop and Search UK App - Making Stop and Searches fair and transparent.