The Future Of Crime Reporting Is Here

Crime Spotter App Promises to Deliver Real Community Crime Fighting

The crime rate in South Africa is nothing to brag about, and regular citizens are fighting a daily battle to keep their loved ones and property safe from this scourge.

The reporting of crime and suspicious activity has improved in recent years with the advent of community chat groups. We’re living in an age in which ordinary citizens are invited to be active participants in the fight against crime. Knowledge is power when it comes to crime prevention and successes hinge on the sharing of intelligence, so harnessing the power of social media is imperative.

This is all well and good, but popular social chat apps like WhatsApp and Facebook messenger have their limitations, and can negatively impact the efforts of community members to effectively help report and fight crime:

People love posting irrelevant information (advertising, lost pets, road blocks, speed traps or any council issues) on community groups, which makes the act of reporting actual crime more difficult. One of the bigger problems is the fact that people become argumentative or use foul language on these types of groups.

Finally, there is no way for communities to measure and track the crimes they report on these groups. This type of information is invaluable to the crime fighting efforts of police and private security companies.

This is where an inspired new crime fighting App hopes to make a huge difference in how we report and track crime. Crime Spotter brings communities closer together through easy to use technology so that information can be shared quickly and centrally.

Features of the App include push notifications of crimes happening nearby, the ability to report suspicious activity and missing persons. Crime reports can be shared easily through Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp. 

Crime Spotter also keeps track of reported crimes, and these statistics will allow law enforcement and security companies to make informed decisions. Crime follows trends and patterns, and the tools that this app provides makes linking crime information, and direct crime fighting action easier than ever before.

Gerald Yapp, one of the creators of Crime Spotter has put years of development and planning into the app that he believes will change crime fighting for good. “Many crimes go unreported as the only incentive to travel to a police station and report it is if you have an insurance claim. As statistics rely on these reports from the police we end up with and inaccurate depiction of crime trends. This app will solve this,” he says.

The creators of the App have been working with dozens of CPF and community crime fighting groups to understand the needs of crime fighting units in South African.

“We have worked with dozens of Community Policing Forums (CPFs) and neighbourhood watches to see how they work and what tools they need available to them. During this time we have been developing the blueprints for the App and are at a stage now that we are ready to complete the development – all we need is backing to make it happen,” Yapp concluded.

The developers are looking for sponsorship from companies or individuals through a crowdfunding initiative. 

A crowd-funding page has been set up for those who would like to contribute to the project and see this App materialize.Visit - https://www.thundafund.com/project/crimespotter

Official website is at - https://crimespotter.app/