The Vigilante Manifesto
medium.com
medium.com
In the spirit of trying new ideas, I think this is definitely an interesting one. I think it will be interesting to see how the public responds to this.
That said, I see a couple of things happening: 1) Most people will not care about this, nor use it. Human apathy is pretty powerful, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I think the majority of us are happy going about our own lives, and don't really want to upset that order. If a crime is happening, I don't think a lot of people will react to it, especially like in the video.
2) A small percentage of people will react, but that's probably not what you want in a situation like this. In emergency response, the number one thing they drill into you is to ensure the area is safe and secure. Paramedics will not render aid to a person if it means they could be harmed themselves. It's useless to have the paramedic injured as well as the victim(s).
LEO and emergency personnel are trained to respond to these situations, and are paid to put their lives on the line. Adding other citizens to the mix is dangerous and irresponsible. I understand that Vigilante is only encouraging people to record what's happening, but even that act is dangerously provocative.
Nevertheless, it is an interesting idea, and I likely have outlined the same kneejerk reaction that most would have to this, and I could very well be wrong. I think this type of app would work best in larger situations like at protests or more open public spaces. Situations like those in the video probably won't happen often, and probably would have the issues I brought up. But then, how is Vigilante different from folks just posting videos on FB Live, Twitter/Periscope, etc.?
The keyword here is paid. We need more market forces in policing. It needs to be easier to fire bad actors and promote the good ones.
We can debate about the quality of current training standards for certain case types, but on balance, I think it's hard to dispute that many situations need the expertise of trained first responders (paid or unpaid). More people on scene doesn't always make things better. Without thinking about the specific problems this is meant to solve and working to enable solutions, this app can be just as dangerously bad as it tries to be good.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
(or 10 or 20 if you feel like it)
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?
Why should we trust you?
What does that even mean?
"Real users" in this case means you downloaded a copy of the app onto their phone, before you started directing the actors?
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?
I had no idea what was going on. So we kept skateboarding.
Next thing I know cop cars are zipping in and out of the neighborhood, dozens of police are running around jumping fences, and there's a helicopter circling overhead.
Our car was parked in the center of the chaos, so we stayed on the far side of the park and watched.
Would have loved to have an app like this that day. Still never got to the bottom of what was actually going on. Or figured out how all those other parents were privy to the situation before I was.
Can someone name even one scenario where some random person off the street intervening is more likely to harm than to help when intervening in a situation based on this app?
It certainly looks like a cool idea, although it says my area isn't covered yet.
Then I saw it was a non-Apple app.
[1]: http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-to-do-when-y...
I'm not heartless, I certainly open the front door and take a gander if I hear my dog barking or a loud noise out front, but beyond that, I'm not sure I'd just leave my family in the house with no plan other than to videotape what could be a violent criminal in the heat of the moment.
Also, what relationship does this company have with a user once that user gets shot in the chest for running around and videotaping an armed robbery with their flashlight beaconing their position and activity to the criminal?
What about when someone calls in a sexual assault - are there protections for their privacy?
How do you think the company gets the 911 calls? You should focus your privacy concerns upstream.
> I'm not sure I'd just leave my family in the house with no plan other than to videotape what could be a violent criminal in the heat of the moment.
Right, but so what? Someone else might, or might be able to from their window. And if not, you weren't going to anyways.
> Also, what relationship does this company have with a user once that user gets shot in the chest
What relationship does Google have to a movie-viewer who doesn't like the movies playing in the cinema that they asked Maps to direct them to?
> for running around and videotaping an armed robbery with their flashlight beaconing their position and activity to the criminal?
You can choose to move away from the alerts, you know... The app doesn't compel you, it only informs you.
I can see many non-violent but interventionary tactics people could use. A pastor could use it, and respond to the 'Children harassing an old man' call the website uses as an example. Not immediately, as if they could stop any ongoing violence, but later to try to find the perpetrators and reach out to them.