Meet Ima, Caleb, and Asha Christian. They’re siblings and high school students from Decatur, Georgia. Their app lets citizens rate their interactions with local law enforcement.
“We had been hearing a lot about the scary and negative issues occurring in the media,” Ima (pronounced Ee-may) told BuzzFeed. “Most recently, the Michael Brown case, and we talk to our parents often about these issues and they really try to put everything into context for us. One of the things they really stress is that we focus on finding solutions.”
The siblings developed Five-O, an iPhone and Android app with the help of mentors. The app aims to empower citizens by assisting them to hold local law enforcement accountable for their actions. Users will be able to document and rate their interactions with individual officers and departments. Community boards will track patterns of abuse, and provide a potential forum for problem-solving among the residents, the media, and the police bureaus themselves.
The app won’t just track negative experiences. You can also document positive interactions as well. The teens developed the app to give a voice to the community. Users will be able to report any instances of physical and verbal abuse by police officers. They will also be able to rate their behavior with grades A to F. The ratings are then stored and can be viewed by any other user.
Additionally, Five-O has a “Know Your Rights” section featuring information from the American Civil Liberties Union. According to ThinkProgress, citizens will be able to provide as much background on an incident as they like, and in instances requiring legal action, that data can be sent directly to law enforcement.
Five-O is currently in beta testing and will be released soon on iTunes and Google. For updates, follow Pine Tart on Twitter and Facebook.
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