Apps That Blast Out Crime Alerts Don’t Have to Rattle You

Nextdoor is an advertising platform that cares little about getting the facts straight. I am assigned my “neighborhood” by my address. I notified Nextdoor that my neighborhood is not correct. I sent city maps showing they had mapped out the neighborhoods incorrectly per the city maps and that people living in the community and maps show none of the neighborhoods as designated. They said they had volunteer neighborhood coordinators who assist in mapping the neighborhoods. I asked what if someone is incorrect, perhaps they want their home to be assigned to a nicer neighborhood. They said they relied on their volunteer. They ignored the town maps I sent. Today I receive information on a town I do not identify with that relies on county sheriffs to police. Our town has its own police force, therefore lower crime. I believe Nextdoor is worthless. If you want to connect neighbors - get the neighborhoods correct as it’s the foundation. This app is a joke. They do not care about fixing its flaws, only building an ad platform. Nextdoor is “fake news”!

I am a member of Nextdoor and also receive a daily summary of police calls in my area. I say "police calls" because many issues that the police respond to are not crimes, such as escorting a funeral, for example, or helping another public agency, perhaps directing traffic around a fire or accident. It takes some understanding of the breadth of police work to interpret a list that just says "other" for some calls. One of my neighbors gets a bit hysterical over "all the crime in our area," but I find there is relatively little crime, given that we live near a very large resort area, with up to 400,000 visitors per day in the summer. Furthermore, most of the responses listed for my area are miles from my own development and/or street. Maybe it's a matter of perspective.

Have had Nextdoor for a couple of years and find it helpful. No, don't focus on it most of the time, but due to crime in the area find it helpful most of the alerts useful in explaining large incidents w/helicopters and multiple patrol cars. Sounds like Citizen might be too much, but Nextdoor is fine. For example, our mailman almost had a heart attack a few months ago when he drove right into an active shooter situation in a nearby park, complete w/helicopters, SWAT team... an app would have warned folks like him to stay away. Moderation is key.

I tried Citizen for a few hours. It's idea of my neighborhood was considerably larger than what I consider it to be. And by being big, it produced too many alerts. It would be better if I could define the radius. Like a half mile, or less.

My town did this with the nixel alerts and found that most people just the notifications off or just stopped using it all together. Also they should not be real time but delayed to prevent people from abusing the system. But that is if you find any real use in them. I dont find any use at all. But that is just me.

Just be careful in general. It's not really that necessary to give money to companies so you can keep up with crime or your neighbors. If ya see something, say something. Otherwise, these apps are just built to make money on fear.

21st century version of "Fox News at 10 pm"

I had Citizen for about a month but it made me paranoid and scared so I deleted it.

I grew up in Rio de Janeiro, a very violent city by any account. This sort of app would likely encourage vigilantism. There is a lot of crime in Rio and there is a also a lot of police violence. I can easily see how this app could There is no constructive purpose to these apps other than the encouragement of mob behavior and violence.

Advert driven crime-apps ... how is this not going to end very, very, very badly?

Don't feed collective paranoia. Skip the app. Sometimes less information is better.

Hubby and I considered buying a Ring doorbell until someone told us they are easy to steal. We had a motion security camera mounted instead.

These apps are fascismogenic. Obviously. Don't get on board with them. We blew off an attempt to set one up in our neighborhood. I'm sure it got set up. Hysteria over crime, especially counterfactual hysteria over crime, is simply porto-fascistic. Sorry. That's the deal. You want to protect your family? Get on board with a Green New Deal and global nuclear disarmament. Nukes and AGW are pretty much guaranteed to destroy your children's lives if we do nothing about them. You: "Doug sounds suspicious to me. I say we report him. For the sake of the children!"

You’d have to be nuts to use Nextdoor unless you want to expose highly sensitive and personal info about yourself to the people in your neighborhood. This is a disastrous, preposterous and useless invasion of your privacy. Stay away from it.

I deleted the nextdoor app after I realized it was making me paranoid and convinced my neighborhood was under siege. Calm and peace returned. I have a text group with the nearest neighbors that informs me of anything truly meaningful (rare). I would like to mention to Mr. Chen that just touching your cell phone while driving, even at a red light, is illegal in my state and I think it’s a good policy to follow everywhere except in a dire emergency, which was not the case in the story.

This problem goes entirely away if you simply don't download an app whose entire purpose is to manipulate you.

I was on one of these apps for a while. I lasted 2 months. The amount of "suspicious" activities published was ridiculous. One day I read about "a suspicious man with a cap and sunglasses walking on a street around my house." It took me a moment and then realized they were talking about me?! I was just going on a walk after a long day of work. Seriously!? There are too many people who become paranoid from using these apps, peaking out their windows, increasingly suspicious of anything going on. Don't forget, the world is, by large, filled with beautiful, kind and amazing people.

I found Citizen to be a useful utility that I often enjoyed looking at with my friends, but after they updated the app to only work if I constantly shared my location - I deleted it. I'm skeptical of any app that constantly needs my location, and one that won't let me use it unless I opt-in? I'll survive without it.

The problem with broad statistics is that they gloss over increases in petty crimes that can severely chip away at quality of life in neighborhoods where crime historically has been far below the broader regional mean.