Your claim about 2015 murder rates seems to be fear-mongering, from where I stand. The murder rate nationally is at a 51 year low, even with the 2015 uptick[1].
What exactly is the aim here? Your question "Could we restore trust between law enforcement and community" doesn't seem to be answered in the post, and the implication that your app could do this seems dubious.
Is you aim to get people to flock to 911 calls and film them? That seems like what the post is driving at, but never directly says.
Additionally, the focus on murder rates is flawed for a few reasons:
1) Murders are not evenly distributed in most (all?) cities. In Chicago, for example, violence is heavily concentrated in certain areas. That means it's not a generalized problem yet this app doesn't address that clustering in a meaningful way.
2) Murders are not the crime that most people will feel comfortable intervening in – and, arguably, not one that is most high-value to report in the moment – unless you're focusing on armed, trained responders – who are likely going to be Police (unless we're getting into militia here and that's a whole different discussion). Instead, less violent offenses seem more manageable as a starting point. What if a purse snatching was reported?
To be honest, I'm still not sure what value the app provides – generally speaking, this looks to encourage mob justice which is fraught with risk of mistaken identity and violations of individual rights.
For the creators – what, specifically, are you looking for members of the public to do?
This strikes me as another one of the AWARENESS!! "solutions" – assuming that awareness is the problem – honestly, especially in crime solving, I don't think that's the issue. Awareness of identifiable precursors to crime? That'd be really useful (what they are, I have no clue). Awareness of active shooter situations? Also useful – but much more rare and less about fixing an more about avoiding for the general user...
I consider this app as an extension of my senses. I get a push message when an emergency is happening nearby. Maybe I can help, maybe its none of my business, maybe I'll completely avoid that block. But I get a choice, where my earlier ignorance is no choice at all.
It's the technological equivalent of someone shouting for help. You can assist or not.
Disclaimer: I helped build the backend so I'm biased.
Can you provide several examples of where this would help? I've lived in a high-crime city (Guatemala) for a while. I imagine like other places, you develop a sense of the more dangerous areas.
Outside of that, I'm not sure what intelligence can help. Real attacks are quick, sudden. One minute I'm in traffic, next minute guy's shooting the car in front of me. And a minute later, they're gone. There's basically no value in "yelling" about these things. At best, report them on Waze so people can avoid the possible traffic.
For more drawn-out situations like domestic abuse, what's your expectation? Nearby won't intervene, but someone a few floors away is going to get an alert and what, jump in? Sure, you can invent scenarios where this might help (or even save a life) but I'd be surprised if this doesn't backfire.
People responding to crime are going to be self-selecting to be vigilantes. A vigilante guy responding to a domestic abuse situation sounds like the start of a tragic story.
Which scenarios do you see with positive outcomes? What is your team doing to mitigate the downsides?
But how often is something like that even happening? I doubt many of Vigilante's users live in a place like Mogadishu, or Cape Town, or some stereotypical violent city where "avoiding an area" is necessary. And if you do, I'm not sure how the app really makes a difference.
When I was a kid (11-12) I injured my neck and was pretty worried, stuck lying down, and my pop called 911 to ask for help. A neighbor two houses down was a volunteer fireman so he heard the call over the radio. He headed over and helped make my family and I much more calm while we waited for emergency professionals to show up.
Caring about the safety of people in your neighborhood is a great start. Technology playing a role feels like less of a gamble and more of an inevitability.
That is an excellent example, but it's contrary to the examples in the blog post & video.
I'm a trained medical first responder (lapsed cert.), so I definitely can appreciate what you've stated. In fact, I'd probably react the same way as your neighbour. I'd pop out and help my fellow neighbours too.
When you present it that way, I like the idea. I'm not sure about the way Vigilante is presented though.
Was your neck injured due to a crime? Maybe target this app as a public safety tool, not a vigilante crimestopper system.
Edit: A really great angle is allowing groups of people to get notified together. Works best with phone integration. At my last company I created a 9-1-1 product that does exactly that. A user could load neighbours or relatives to be alerted and listen in to their 9-1-1 calls. That way if, say, an elderly relative called 9-1-1, nearby family could perhaps intervene (for minor stuff or cases where the caller is suffering from a mental lapse) or at least know what's going on immediately.
This is also a great value add to businesses or campuses that want to know about emergencies in real time for coordinated response. Or just to know when paramedics come in the front door, who is having the incident so they can efficiently direct them.
First, sensory overload is a real thing (to extend the analogy). Second, there's the presumption that "more information" = better but that's not clear in this case. 911 calls are often themselves reports of past events (recent past, but still past) so, again, I ask – what are you hoping people will do? What will they do? How do you bridge those or help people do what they want to/need to do? Awareness is rarely the real need (ala the idea that I'm not really buying a drill because I want a power tool – I'm buying a drill because I need a hole made here, here and here).
If you don't actually have a clear answer to that, then this is a half-baked idea because it's not clear what problem you're really solving – and it falls back to the idea of "ZOMG! AWARENESS!!!!1" which is really a sign of insufficient thinking, IMHO.
I'd challenge you all to step back, articulate a clear problem frame and goal and maybe then look at the way crime unfolds – map out before, during after and look at what awareness does at each of those points (and what signals you can meaningfully find). How, then, can you build an app to do those things/support those aims and activities that you've identified as your goals? If you've done that, then articulate that in your description/writing.
Out of curiosity, what is the tech stack behind this application? I can see some interesting problems wrt real time push notifications and a streaming data pipeline potentially.
We debated whether to leave those statistics in, even though we're citing major sources. You can look at these statistics from different angles.
Our main point is that there is still a real and often growing problem with violent crime, especially in the communities we're working with. Many people still feel very unsafe and are looking for solutions.
We've gotten a lot of positive feedback both from police and civilians. People are excited to see a tech company trying to help, and they have told us they feel safer when others are recording the scene in a peaceful and unbiased way. During our beta tests we had users help deter crime, break up fights, and support their neighbors.
>Our main point is that there is still a real and often growing problem with violent crime
That's just it though, the data do not support this claim. The general trend is decreasing crime. In fact the sole source you cite says:
>Many crime experts warn against reading too much into recent statistics. In fact, murder rates remained largely unchanged in 70 cities, and decreased significantly in five.
“Even if the uptick continues in some cities, I doubt the pattern will become universal,” Dr. Sampson said.
And sure, you have some positive feedback, great. But how often has your app been misused? How "concerned citizens" mistaken an innocent person as having been involved in a crime? What about the privacy of victims of crimes? How do you store your data? How do you ensure privacy? Do you give data to law enforcement? Without warrants? Do you disclose any of this data? What do you do to protect extra sensitive data like domestic abuse, and sexual assaults?
The video appears to imply that the app has operators that are transcribing police scanner activity into app reports, I don't believe there is any non-public info being accessed or govt partnership here or else I would think it would be advertised. Can someone confirm if this implication is correct?
I always had the idea that more and more NYC police radios are being trunked and encrypted in ways that the public can no longer access, does anyone know if this is the case?
All of the people in the video who are using the app and responding to the alert are actual users who have been actively participating in our beta in New York City.
1) Dennis Crowley supposedly searched for a cofounder for years before meeting Foursquares cofounder but I'm sure there are other examples.
2) I'm learning how to code, found it quite difficult from scratch, but the point is that without a team, my chances of finding an angel/VC to invest are really small even if I code it or pay someone to. Do you guys know any examples of successful startups where the founders were not friends?
I do the same thing. The article described my sentiments exactly... I feel like I'm missing out on something. Especially for a bigger purchase, a 10% off coupon can save $100-200 and is worth waiting for sometimes
Is it possible that the app review teams were instructed to find a reason to reject all apps in a given category for a month or two leading up to the release of iOS7? Were other weather-related apps approved recently?
I feel this way with respect to sites that I am forced to sign up for just to view the demo. Sites that I will never use again ... I don't want them being my best friend yet.
If I've tried the demo and I am actually signing up to use your site, this type of email would be tolerable, but again, I generally don't want to engage with the company unless I have an issue.
The only time I can see this being welcome to me is in a B2B context where I have signed a longer-term contract for a solution that my business will need support for.
