Central High School grad develops free app to share police encounters

On the way to work last year, Mbye Njie was pulled over by police in Decatur.

It was the third time in recent weeks.

Unlike the other two stops that did not result in tickets, Njie said the officer had tailed him for four miles. He was handcuffed and put in the back of the patrol car while the officer said he was searching for a warrant for Njie's arrest.

Thirty minutes later, Njie was released.

"I kind of let him know I didn't feel very good being treated like a fish in a catch-and-release pond because that's what it felt like," Njie said.

The 34-year-old, who moved to America from his native Gambia when he was just 7, turned his frustration into a business venture to create a software application, or app, to ease tension and document traffic stops and other law enforcement encounters.

Incensed from repeatedly feeling racially profiled, Njie and his stepmother, Catherine Meeks, who writes a column for The Telegraph, visited the officers, who also are black.

"They actually told us that profiling was legal. It was a law and if we wanted something done, we would have to go and get that law changed, that they were doing their job," Njie said.

While reading comments on his mother's column about the episode, Njie grew tired of defending himself when he had done nothing wrong.

Social media in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, showed him that people have different perspectives based on their own experience with law enforcement.

Older, more affluent whites generally perceived that the shooting had to be Brown's fault, he said, while minorities and lower class whites leaned more toward Brown's being a victim of an aggressive white officer.

"If we had video, once again, this argument becomes a lot clearer," Njie said.

After Njie's traffic stop, his white boss tried to tell him how to behave for police.

Njie told him: "You as a 40-year-old white man and me as a young black man have two different experiences when a cop pulls us over, and I guarantee I know how to behave around a cop way better than you do," Njie recalled.

Without a way to prove he did the right thing, he came up with the idea of developing an app.

"OK, let me just show people what it looks like when I get pulled over," he thought.

Over the past year, Njie and a tech guru developed Legal Equalizer, a mobile application for cell phones to send alerts and video of encounters with police or others. The app is available in English and Spanish.

Once downloaded, the press of an SOS button sends an alert to three contacts. The location is automatically configured by GPS coordinates and sent in the message.

Another tap and the camera begins recording. Once the video ends, it can be sent immediately to the contacts, is filed on the phone and backed up on the app's server, in case the phone is destroyed.

Realizing that a person's response to law enforcement can escalate tension and produce disastrous outcomes, Njie included information on citizens' rights when encountering police.

"As people know their rights, then that will make that encounter much smoother as well," he said. "A lot of these instances start from something as simple as the citizen refusing to get out of the car. ... If they ask you, no matter what, just step out of the car. You can record that encounter."

Njie, who graduated from Central High School and then earned a degree in anthropology from Davidson College, was able to do about $250,000 in development work with about $30,000 raised from a GoFundMe campaign and a Macon investor.

Since it launched on Nov. 3, Njie has been promoting the app on New York radio stations and in an interview with the Huffington Post.

Njie said he declined a $3 million dollar offer from investors who wanted to take control of his company. He believes the free app will be worth much more to advertisers and others as they expand its features.

Meeks is proud her son overlooked the money to keep control of the company.

No one can put a price on her peace of mind knowing she will be alerted if either of her sons has a problem with police.

"It's the constant concern I have. I don't walk around obsessing about it, but it is in the back of my mind," she said. "He gets profiled. If he had resisted, he could have wound up injured."

Njie said he tested the app with law enforcement officers, who applauded the inclusion of proper protocol for police encounters.

The app can be valuable anytime someone feels in danger, he said, not just in a law enforcement setting.

He expects police officers who don't have body cameras to take advantage of the technology, which could clear them of any wrongdoing.

"It's holding people accountable on both ends," he said.

To contact writer Liz Fabian, call 744-4303 and read Tuesday's Telegraph.

This story was originally published November 10, 2015 at 4:52 PM with the headline "Central High School grad develops free app to share police encounters ."