Citizen CEO and founder Andrew Frame is under fire for putting a bounty on the wrong man’s head in southern California
Citizen, the crime tracking and neighborhood watch app, is facing new scrutiny over a number of controversies, after the CEO’s internal remarks were leaked in a new report.
CEO Andrew Frame made frenzied comments on a company Slack chat on May 15, after placing a $30,000 bounty on a homeless man, wrongly accusing him of arson in a Los Angeles wildfire.
Police later released that man for lack of evidence, and arrested and charged a different homeless man, 48-year-old Ramon Rodriguez — but not before Frame demanded a push notification to Citizen users in Los Angeles with a photo of the wrong suspect, urging them to hunt him down.
‘first name? What is it?! publish ALL info,’ Frame wrote in the Slack chat, according to Vice, which interviewed former employees and obtained the internal records.
‘FIND THIS F***,’ he told them. ‘LETS GET THIS GUY BEFORE MIDNIGHT HES GOING DOWN.’
‘BREAKING NEWS. this guy is the devil. get him,’ Frame said. ‘by midnight!@#! we hate this guy. GET HIM.’
The app pushed the bounty out in an alert to users in Southern California last Saturday, but included a picture of a homeless man, Devin Hilton (pictured), who was later released by the police for lack of evidence
Frame had initially set the bounty at $10,000, but growing frantic, he increased it to $20,000 and then $30,000.
‘Close in on him. 30k Let’s get him. No escape. Let’s increase. 30k,’ Frame said. ‘Notify all of la. Blast to all of la.’
The Los Angeles Fire Department announced over the weekend that it had arrested a different homeless man, 48-year-old Ramon Rodriguez, on suspicion of the blaze
‘Citizen is OnAir: Arsonist Pursuit Continues,’ the notification, which went out to 848,816 Citizen users in Los Angeles, said. ‘We are now offering a $30,000 reward for any information directly leading to his arrest tonight. Tap to join the live search.’
In the chat room with Frame, one Citizen employee pointed out that the company was violating its own terms of service that prohibit ‘posting of specific information that could identify parties involved in an incident’ — but the complaint went ignored, according to Vice.
A Citizen spokesperson told DailyMail.com on Friday: ‘Citizen’s mission is to make the world a safer place. When a brush fire started in Pacific Palisades earlier this month, our intention was to keep our Los Angeles users safe and informed as evacuations were ordered and homes were destroyed.’
‘Officials labeled the fire an act of arson, and unfortunately, an on-the-ground tip about a person of interest from an LAPD Sergeant was used in place of official confirmation from public safety agencies. We deeply regret our mistake and are working to improve our internal processes to prevent this from happening again,’ the spokesperson added.
Flames from a brush fire in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles on May 15
The new report also revealed that Citizen uses paid ‘street teams’ posing as regular users, who go out and film incidents to encourage more active user participation.
One such team even intervened to rescue a lost autistic boy in the Bronx earlier this month.
The street team broadcast live as they located the boy at a Target and convinced him to get into their car so they could drive him back to his family — raising alarm from some watching who thought the boy was getting into a car with random strangers.
‘In the case of the missing boy in the Bronx earlier this month, we heard from countless members of the Citizen community in New York City – mothers, teachers, and other Good Samaritans – who took it upon themselves to help look for him. It was the collective effort of the Citizen community that brought this boy home,’ a Citizen spokesperson told DailyMail.com in a statement.
Citizen does not publicly acknowledge the existence of its street teams, but told DailyMail.com: ‘From time to time, we put temporary teams in place in some of the cities where Citizen is available to demonstrate how the platform works, and to show responsible broadcasting practices – similar to how social media platforms have paid creators.’
Meanwhile, it emerged that Citizen is backing down from plans it had considered to create a private security force to dispatch to users in distress.
On Tuesday, Citizen ended the pilot program in Los Angeles and says it has no plans to launch a similar service elsewhere, according to CBS News.
It comes after a Citizen spokeswoman last week confirmed the pilot program to DailyMail.com, saying that it was testing private security responses with its own employees in Los Angeles, for example if they wanted to be escorted home at late at night.
A mysterious Citizen-branded patrol vehicle had been seen prowling the streets of Los Angeles, which was recently linked to private security firm Los Angeles Professional Security (LAPS).
‘This was a small 30-day test that is now complete,’ a Citizen spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch of the program. ‘We have no plans to launch our own private security force and no ongoing relationship with LAPS.’
In recent days, a mysterious Citizen-branded ‘private patrol’ car has been seen prowling LA. The company says it is piloting a private security force to respond to user requests
The Citizen app, first released in 2016, relies on police scanner traffic and user reports, including user-submitted videos, to map reports of nearby crimes and police responses
The Citizen app, first released in 2016 while named Vigilante, is wildly popular in major cities as a way to track nearby crimes. It is currently available in about 20 large cities.
The app relies on police scanner traffic and user reports, including user-submitted videos, to map reports of nearby crimes and police responses.
The pilot program to provide private security was first revealed last week in internal emails leaked to Motherboard.
The internal emails described by Motherboard suggested that the new pilot project was part of an ambitious project to expand the company’s mission from reporting crime to fighting it.
‘The broad master plan was to create a privatized secondary emergency response network,’ one former Citizen employee told the outlet.
The product, described as ‘security response’ in the internal emails, would have had Citizen send a car with private security forces to an app user who requested assistance.
One of the emails claimed that Citizen had pitched the security response service to the Los Angeles Police Department at a high level, and received an enthusiastic response.
The email said that the LAPD, hit by budget cuts last year and at its lowest staffing level in 12 years, is overrun with property crimes and struggling to respond to those types of calls.
The app, currently available in about 20 cities, appears to be considering a dramatic expansion into active crime fighting by creating a ‘privatized secondary emergency response network’
Citizen already offers a $20-a-month personal safety subscription product called ‘Protect’, which allows a Citizen employee to monitor the user’s location when active, and can stream video to the Citizen agent when triggered by a safeword.
Pitched as a ‘digital bodyguard,’ the service advertises ‘Instant emergency response to your exact location’ in the event of trouble.
In addition to LAPS, the emails suggest that Citizen is working with Securitas, a private security guard company, for the pilot program.
One email describes a test run by a Citizen employee in Los Angeles, who called in a Securitas guard to escort her to get a cup of coffee.
The email said improvements were needed to the user and agent experience, and that the results were under review with Securitas to make adjustments.
Though it has soared in popularity as violent crime has surged in many cities, the Citizen app has also drawn criticism, including accusations that it fosters paranoia or even racism.
Initially named Vigilante, the app was pulled from Apple’s App Store over fears it would inspire users to take the law into their own hands, before relaunching under the current name.
On Friday, the Verge first reported that Citizen CEO and founder Frame personally authorized the unorthodox $30,000 bounty to ‘hunt down’ an arsonist — but put the money on the wrong man’s head.
The app pushed the bounty out in an alert to users in Southern California last Saturday, but included a picture of a homeless man who was later released by the police for lack of evidence.
‘Let’s find this guy, activate safety network completely,’ Frame wrote in an internal message, according to The Verge.
‘This is a great transition of Citizen back to active safety. We are not a news company. We are safety and we make this sort of heinous crime impossible to escape from. That needs to be our mindset,’ the message added.
After the mistaken identity was revealed, the company said in a statement that it is ‘actively working to improve our internal processes to ensure this does not occur again.’
‘Our mission is to protect all people, including people experiencing homelessness,’ a Citizen spokesperson told DailyMail.com on Friday.
‘For example, when around 90 families were displaced from a major fire in an apartment building in Queens last month, we sent a notification to every Citizen user in New York City with a call to action to donate to their fundraising page,’ the spokesperson said.
‘Ultimately, Citizen helped the families to raise more than $300,000 to assist them as they recovered from this devastating incident. This is one example of Citizen as a force for good.’