How safety startup Citizen surpassed Twitter to become Apple’s top news app amid the George Floyd protests: by StevenBertoni
Citizen listens to thousands of police, fire, and energy service radio calls and, using your smartphone’s GPS location, alerts you to emergencies nearby. With Citizen, you can see ongoing emergencies on a map, receive live updates on the situation, upload videos of the event, and post comments. During the last week of protests, residents have used the app to avoid violence, protestors to stay updated on police activity, and the media—and spectators—to track and follow the action.
“All of these protests are because of the transparency created by the [George Floyd] smartphone video,” says Frame. “We're empowering individuals with information and tools to create accountability.”about Citizen—how it works, why it started, the controversy it faces, and how it plans to make money. Below some key takeaways about what Citizen does and how it does it.
How Citizen organizes the thousands of hours of daily radio calls and reports into usable and accurate information: Citizen’s custom-built AI promptly processes the radio clip, cutting static and dead air, transcribing the audio, pulling out key words and pinning to a digital street map a feverish red dot where the man was last seen. From there a communication analyst takes over, listening to the 911 dispatch, writing a short notification and sending it to Citizen app users within a quarter-mile of the incident .
Sources in the company hint at a model in which Citizen charges universities, airports, stadiums and other places with lots of people to allow authorities to send notifications to users—either to blast out emergency instructions or quell panic after a false alarm. There’s also the potential to let users message the officials about safety concerns, a mobile-powered “See Something, Say Something.” Investors note that billions of dollars are spent every year on security.
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