Three teenagers from Decatur, Georgia have created an app designed to foster a culture of accountability and accessibility for citizens dealing with local law enforcement and to reduce instances of police brutality.
The Madame Noire blog reported on Five-O, an app for Android and iPhone that directs users to the nearest law enforcement facility in the event of an emergency and allows users to rate and review their experiences with officers of the law.
Sixteen-year-old Ima Christian and her brother Caleb, 14, and sister Asha, 15 created the app as a response to the deaths of young people of color at the hands of out-of-control police.
"We’ve been hearing about the negative instances in the news, for instance most recently the Michael Brown case, and we always talk about these issues with our parents," said Ima Christian to Business Insider. "They always try to reinforce that we should focus on solutions. It's important to talk about the issues, but they try to make us focus on finding solutions. That made us think why don't we create an app to help us solve this problem."
The siblings have a deep knowledge of coding. Five-O is the third app produced by their company Pinetart, Inc.
Five-O users can not only rate and document their experiences with individual police officers, but also share and compare their experiences with other users via county-specific message boards. The teens hope to not only document abuses of power, but to highlight positive interactions with law enforcement.
“We’d like to know which regions in the U.S. provide horrible law enforcement services as well as highlight the agencies that are highly rated by their citizens," Ima Christian explained. "In addition to putting more power into the hands of citizens when interacting with law enforcement, we believe that highly rated police departments should be used as models for those that fail at providing quality law enforcement services.”
The app is available at the iTunes App store and will be available for Android on August 18.
Watch video about this story, embedded below via YouTube:
[image of Christian siblings via Facebook.com]
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