The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office launched a new platform for the public to anonymously upload videos of criminal activity, and some are questioning the timing of its rollout and the program itself.
The sheriff’s office introduced its Sheriff’s Hub and Resource Exchange (SHARE) two days after one of its deputies, who has not been identified, shot and killed 26-year-old Antonio Johnson.
Following the shooting, the sheriff’s office said there is no body or dash cam footage of the shooting after previously stating that footage of the incident had been sent to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations.
Josh Spickler, executive director of Just City, called the timing of the SHARE program launch “brazen.”
“It flies in the face of the community,” he said. “It’s quite galling for them to be asking people to contribute videos and photos when they shot and killed a man this week and are now telling us there’s no video or photo evidence.”
The sheriff’s office describes SHARE as an “initiative to assist in addressing neighborhood crime” through a “proactive, problem-solving partnership with the community.”
Residents and businesses can upload videos or photos of crime anonymously on an online portal, which the sheriff’s office will subsequently investigate.
Spickler said SHARE could lead to civil liberty issues and that the growth of surveillance is “troubling.”
“This community is already overpoliced and this only reinforces that,” Spickler said. “The more surveillance the sheriff’s office has available to it, the more people of color that will be rounded up and implicated in crimes they may or may not have committed.”
Pastor and activist Earle Fisher agreed, saying that the program will likely lead to increased unwarranted contact with law enforcement and not a decrease in crime.
He worries that the public’s implicit bias and a lack of knowledge about the law will form a “perfect storm of constitutional violations.”
“This ultimately means you have untrained individuals commentating to law enforcement about what they think may be inappropriate,” Fisher said. “Now police can do illegal surveillance and couch it under the umbrella of an anonymous source.”
Spickler said programs like SHARE can lead to better public safety outcomes, but there needs to be a balance between people’s right to privacy and the need to be protected.
Spickler said SHARE does nothing to address the root causes of crime or police overreach and brutality.
“This is simply another quick, cheap, and easy move,” Spickler said. “That’s all law enforcement does anymore. It’s easy to pour that money into guns, cars, and bullet proof vests, but it’s difficult to question policies and programs like this at its very core.”