Johannesburg-based design agency, In-Detail Advertising, has released a crime-reporting and alert app, which it hopes will bring back citizens’ ease of movement in their own neighbourhoods.
The CrimeSpotter app gives users the ability to report crimes as well as receive alerts of crimes happening within a maximum radius of 10km.
Gerald Yapp, creative director at In-Detail Advertising, says the idea for the app began 10 years ago, with development happening over the last two years and finally launching this month.
According to Yapp, the app currently has 10 000 users and is growing daily.
“We hope the app builds a sense of community as South Africans band together to report on crime and take back their streets,” he says. “As a country, we have lost our freedom of movement to crime – maybe CrimeSpotter can be a meaningful catalyst in the change we would all like to see.”
Yapp says crimes are reported by users who volunteer the information to help others avoid danger, or to possibly contribute information that would be useful.
“Every crime report creates a post that others can view and comment on, share crime information that will be helpful to local law enforcement, with the ultimate goal of building a growing database of trending crimes in order to have an accurate depiction of crime in South Africa.”
Explaining why a design agency decided to develop the crime-spotting app, Yapp says the firm has “strong capabilities” in digital development and CrimeSpotter is an experiment to see if technology can be used to reduce crime in South Africa.
He goes on to say there are no backers or funders; creating and developing the app is an independent initiative.
“As a design and development studio, we wanted to find a way to help combat crime through technology – something that would give everyone access to crime trends and information for greater awareness and crime-prevention.
“We imagined how difficult things could be for criminals if we had millions of active users around the country reporting crime and suspicious activity. Criminals would have no place to hide.”
He highlights that information collated in the app can be used by community police forums (CPFs), neighbourhood watches, security companies and the police to actively fight crime.
While CrimeSpotter isn’t the first neighbourhood-focused crime-fighting app in the market, Yapp says what makes it different is that it is community-driven.
This is you watching out for your neighbours and people uniting against a common criminal enemy, he states. “It is completely free and users can report anonymously or even gain exposure by building on their public profile. Security companies in particular can display how proactive they are in a suburb by posting often to alert residents. CPFs can make use of the app to gather information and to map all incidents with helpful information to their communities. CrimeSpotter hopes that data gathered will help connect communities and gather vital information for better policing.
“WhatsApp groups which are common in neighbourhood groups are often fragmented and invite only – they can become unfocused and even annoying – while CrimeSpotter is purely about safety and security and not about snitching on your neighbours. This is a real tool for community policing.”
He notes the next stage in the development phase of the app will be introducing a Web portal with charting and database mining tools for crime study and analysis. This, he notes, will provide valuable tools to neighbourhood watches, security companies and the police.
“The app will also be constantly enhanced as we receive user feedback and monitor user experiences,” states Yapp.
CrimeSpotter is available for download from the App Store, Google Play Store and Huawei AppGallery.
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