Helicopters, A Patrol Car And Virtual Bodyguards - Inside Citizens Scattered Push To Upend Public Safety
Helicopters, a patrol car and virtual bodyguards: Inside Citizen's scattered push to upend public safety
Long before Citizen, a contentious real-time crime alerting app, made headlines by testing a company-branded patrol car on the streets of Los Angeles, the startup's CEO teased an even more striking concept for a private security force: helicopters.
According to two former employees, Citizen founder and CEO Andrew Frame frequently floated the idea during internal meetings of a helicopter or hovercraft one day extracting a Citizen user from a dangerous situation.
Former employees who worked in research and development told CNN Business that the concept felt "abstract," attributing it to a CEO with a "head in the clouds vision of the future."
"We'd joke, 'That's just Andrew being Andrew,'" the second former employee explained, adding that Frame was "obsessed with the idea of being a badass security service."
"He desired ostentatious items," the second employee explained.
Concerning the helicopter concept, a Citizen spokesperson told CNN Business: "Our mission is safety, and anything related to physical world safety is possible."
Recent headlines have prompted some former employees to reconsider the seemingly absurd notion, and more broadly, the company for which they previously worked.
Citizen initially offered a $30,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of an alleged arson suspect – the first time the company has paid a reward for information leading to the arrest of an arson suspect – but the individual was not responsible for the fire. Citizen stated that it identified the individual by mistake after receiving an on-the-ground tip from an LAPD Sergeant rather than official confirmation prior to sharing information about the individual via its new live broadcasting feature, OnAir, and that it is "working to improve our internal processes."
Vice then reported that the company was collaborating with a third-party private security firm to pilot a "personal rapid response service" that, as a spokesperson previously explained to CNN Business, could be summoned to escort a person who was fearful for their safety. It sparked debate over the potential benefits and drawbacks of privatized security. (While a company spokesperson confirmed that the trial – which was restricted to certain employees – is complete and that the company has no plans to establish its own private security force, the spokesperson did not rule out partnering with another third-party to do so on its behalf.)
However, interviews with five former employees indicate that these latest moves reflect an ambitious founder navigating a highly sensitive space with growth and dollar signs in mind. Former employees, who spoke to CNN Business on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation or career consequences, paint a picture of a startup whose stated mission of making people safer became increasingly murky as it chased revenue, user acquisition, and raising Citizen's profile with one splashy idea after another.
According to a spokesperson for CNN Business, "Andrew is laser-focused on Citizen's mission to make the world a safer place, and he and his team work tirelessly to develop new, advanced, and powerful technologies to protect our users and communities."
Citizen is best known for condensing police and other emergency dispatches into real-time alerts and sharing them with users who are nearby the incidents and can also upload live video and photos of what they see. However, the company has recently experimented with an array of products and services, including the launch of social networking features, the livestreaming of its own newscasts, and the testing of virtual bodyguards and a private patrol car.
While growth is common in the technology industry, some insiders interpreted these efforts as a sign that the company was unsure of its direction. Meanwhile, observers on the outside are concerned that there is a clear disconnect between what is best for Citizen's business and what is best for citizens.
"The Citizen app creates a conflict in any type of business where they may develop a private security service in response to fear based on information they've provided," said Jennifer Grygiel, an associate professor at Syracuse University who has conducted research on police use of social media. "This is a direct incentive and source of contention; they have an incentive to create a propaganda environment and then exploit it."
"They just don't know who they are"
It was only a matter of time before the startup sparked controversy. When Vigilante was launched in 2016, it was quickly removed from the Apple App Store due to concerns that it might encourage people to rush to crime scenes to document them. It relaunched as Citizen in 2017 with a more subdued marketing campaign emphasizing the role of civilians in locating and reporting incidents.
Since then, the service – with its numerous push notifications about nearby crimes – has been criticized for its potential to incite anxiety, vigilantism, and profiling – and that was before the bounty and private security force were reported.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last fall, Frame discussed the app's early days and acknowledged the app's mixed reception. "Sometimes new ideas are too much, too soon.... Everyone kind of said, 'Whoa, is this real? Are we watching an episode of Black Mirror or is this an actual product available on the App Store?'" Frame explained.
According to Frame, Citizen's mission is "the most important thing for me," and he summed it up succinctly: "Citizen is a complete and total disruption of public safety."
Despite the company's early criticisms, his pitch appeared to work. According to data research firm Pitchbook, Citizen has raised $132 million from well-known venture capital firms, including Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Sequoia Capital. Citizen, according to its website, has over 7 million users and attracted staffers who believed that information transmitted via the app could be used to not only keep people safe, but also as a powerful tool for assisting communities in locating a lost dog or a missing family member.
Several employees told CNN Business that they were excited to join a startup that appeared to be committed to doing good in the world by crowdsourcing information about local safety incidents from emergency dispatchers and citizens.
However, once inside, some claimed they developed a new perspective on the company. "They simply have no idea who they are," the second former employee explained.
"There was a lot of pivoting — we're going to focus on this product but then this and this," a former employee familiar with the company's content strategy explained.
According to a Citizen spokesperson, the company is "constantly testing new ideas."
"That is the nature of technological innovation," the spokesperson explained. "We are currently conducting several tests, including our OnAir product, which can be used in a variety of ways, including as an ultra-Amber Alert, in which a fully immersive citywide search party is organized to look for a missing child; this was recently used to return a missing autistic boy to his family in New York, while still in testing."
Pivot to personal security
Since late 2019, the company's growth strategies have included the following: It considered producing a regular, produced live newscast for Citizen, which would be hosted by a professional host in front of a green screen, according to a former employee familiar with the company's content plans. It hired at least three former employees of HQ Trivia, a live mobile trivia game show startup that shut down in February 2020 and relaunched six weeks later, the person said, with the intention of leveraging their expertise in producing broadcasts.
(A Citizen spokesperson stated that the company plans to launch "an incredibly powerful decentralized news and active safety product" this year.)
Additionally, it integrated social networking features into its app, allowing friends to keep tabs on loved ones. The pandemic then began, and the company launched SafePass, a Covid-19 contact tracing app.
"I believe they aspired to be a variety of different types of businesses but weren't sure which," said the research and development employee.
According to the employee who worked on research and development, the company explored additional monetization strategies such as an enterprise model that would allow venues to communicate with users in an arena about safety concerns via the Citizen platform. Citizen confirmed that an enterprise security product was being tested in several locations throughout New York City. "At the moment, we have nothing to announce," the spokesperson stated.
Personal security, on the other hand, became a clear focus, placing the company in the position of alerting residents to crimes occurring in their neighborhood and then selling them a premium service to help them feel safer.
While cost prohibits some groups from using a paid service, there are additional barriers that may prevent people from signing up. "A person has to believe they deserve to feel safe and protected [in order to buy in]," according to Sarah Lageson, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University and author of the book "Digital Punishment."
Frame teased an unnamed subscription service on a podcast last fall, describing it as "a complete redo of the 911 public safety response system." Internally, the company had already begun testing its first paid feature, Citizen Protect, last summer. Citizen Protect is a subscription service that costs $19.99 per month and provides users with access to a Citizen Protect agent who acts as a virtual bodyguard. According to sources and the Citizen App Store listing, the agent can virtually walk a person home if necessary, for example, by video, listening to audio, and monitoring their location to ensure their safety, or escalate to a person's emergency contacts or 911. (The company declined to comment on Citizen Protect because it is still in beta, but a Fast Company reporter recently wrote about their experience using the service, stating that it "strikes me as mass surveillance disguised as a public good, poised to channel generalized fear into something more nefarious.")
Three former employees stated that employees expressed concerns about Citizen Protect's affordability and apparent disconnect from the company's original selling point of being an open 911 system. According to one former employee who worked as a Protect agent, these concerns were raised during a town hall event and in meetings with leadership working on Citizen Protect.
Concerning affordability, a Citizen spokesperson stated: "The first step is to develop a valuable consumer safety product that evolves the current 911 system. The second step is to determine how to make it universally accessible, which we strongly believe in."
According to the former employee, there was little training or infrastructure in place before the company began rapidly ramping up Citizen Protect sign-ups. "It appeared as though they were focusing on quantity rather than quality of calls," the individual stated, noting that agents were unable to manage multiple calls concurrently in order to handle the influx of requests. It would be possible, for example, to monitor one person's location while on a video call with another, but that infrastructure was not yet in place, the person stated.
According to a company spokesperson, its agents undergo "a rigorous training program that includes a four-week Public Safety Telecommunicator certification course." The spokesperson stated that agents are capable of handling multiple calls concurrently and that the company's team of agents has grown to meet demand.
According to the employee and an internal email viewed by CNN Business, there were some escalations to 911 from the Citizen Protect feature. However, there were a number of inappropriate callers, as well as individuals who connected to Citizen Protect inadvertently as part of the feature's signup process or via a "Get Help" link in the Citizen app. As one former employee describes his or her experience handling calls from users who had accessed the service: "Usually, it was someone who was thinking, 'what the f—k is this? You're keeping an eye on me?'" (As this is a new product, some users tapped the "Get Help" button out of curiosity.)
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