Citizen App Hiring NYC And LA Residents To Livestream Crime Scenes

Who says crime doesn’t pay? Certainly not the folks behind the Citizen app, which is now offering to pay New York City and Los Angeles residents to livestream crime scenes.

What Happened: The Citizen app sends out localized crime alerts based on information culled from police scanners. It also enables users to report local suspicious activity.

The app launched in 2016 as Vigilante and its backers include Peter Thiel, Sequoia Capital and Greycroft.

According to a New York Post report, Citizen has been recruiting “field team members” on the JournalismJobs.com website, with the responsibility of “live-streaming from your phone straight to the app, covering the event as news.”

Citizen did not identify itself in these job postings, which were put online via a third party; the app initially encouraged users to volunteer livestreaming of crime scenes.

Citizen offered to pay New York City residents $200 per day for working eight-hour shifts while Los Angeles could earn $250 per day for 10-hour shifts. The company’s online advertisement, which has since been deleted, stated it planned an expansion to “other top 10 markets” in the near future.

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What Else Happened: Citizen has been the subject of controversy since its launch, when it was removed from Apple Inc.’s AAPL App Store after one week online amid complaints that it encouraged vigilantism. The app changed its name from Vigilante to Citizen and was returned to the App Store in 2017.

In May, Citizen CEO Andrew Frame generated negative publicity by promising a $30,000 reward for a suspected arsonist in Los Angeles. Police briefly detained the man featured in Frame’s livestream announcement of the bounty, but released him when it was ascertained he had no connection to the crime. The Los Angeles police faulted Frame for creating a situation that could have been “disastrous.”

Photo: Gerd Altmann / Pixabay.