Citizen Keeps Jersey City Informed During Shooting at Newport Centre
First-person accounts on Citizen opened a window into an emergency.
On Friday, January 11, 2019, an argument led to open fire at a Jersey City, NJ mall food court. Just after 6pm, law enforcement were alerted to a verbal disagreement and fist fight in the Newport Centre shopping mall, which escalated to shots fired, and panic taking over the scene.
The moment Citizen was able to confirm an active shooter situation, we instantly sent an alert to users in the immediate region, informing those nearby the emergency in the mall.
Users began to go live, broadcasting video from inside and outside the mall, becoming a source of real-time public knowledge, garnering more than 22.5k views.
As Citizen continued to update with information about the situation, the severity of the incident prompted escalation, leading to alerting the entire region of northern-New Jersey and New York within a 3.5 mile radius of the shopping mall, with a total of 50,604 notifications sent.
Commenters in the Citizen app incident chat begin explaining story from inside the mall. ‘CollinsLogic’ and other users near the shooting answered questions in chat all night, alleviating public fears and providing 1st-person experience of the incident.
Over the course of the shooting and its immediate aftermath, Citizen was the only place providing real-time coverage with first-person accounts, keeping the public safe, protected, and fully informed.
Citizen provided more than 40 live incident updates, along with tweets featuring user-captured video, keeping the public acutely aware of the tragic scene inside the Newport Centre.
It wasn’t until late in the evening, after giving an impromptu press conference, that the Mayor of Jersey City tweeted about the incident. No other official New Jersey accounts tweeted reports of the shooting.
In our mission to Protect the World, our users are the heroes, informing the Citizen community with the information they need to fully understand what is going on in the world around them.
The Citizen App instantly sends safety alerts directly to your phone whenever significant crime or emergencies happen near you.
