The crime reporting app called Citizen is updating its service with a new paid application feature. This new feature gives users a live connection with a “safety agent” for stressful situations or potential emergencies. The Citizen App offers what has been called “situational awareness” to users via user generated content about potential emergencies in real time.

The Citizen app has not gone without its share of criticism, drawing harsh scrutiny for encouraging users to engage in vigilantism by use of the service. The company was recently targeted for posting a thirty-thousand-dollar reward for the location of a man who was wrongfully suspected of Arson.

Citizen app’s new feature which will allow the app to monitor the user’s location put them into contact with staff members who can monitor sound and video or pass the case to 911 emergency services if such a state of emergency is warranted. The new feature which is branded as “Protect” will enable safety agents to alert safety contacts for the user or send an alert out for other subscribers that may be local.

Citizen App recently explored the idea of hiring private security agents to act as first responders to deal with issues but has since stated that this is unrelated to the new Protect feature added to the app. Users can trigger the protect feature by shaking their cell phone or triggering the app’s noise detection technology by screaming.

Citizen’s protect agents are required to have only four weeks of training which the company says contains content on anti-racism and bias prevention. Concerns have been raised about Citizen’s hiring of former law enforcement personnel to act as Protect Agents in the wake of the George Floyd murder. Despite all of the various complaints leveled against the company Citizen app has raked in $130,000,000 venture capital investment. Read more about Citizen App, here.

Find more information about them on https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/3/22606053/citizen-crime-tracking-app-protect-safety-helpline-subscription-launch