Citizen Provides Real-Time Coverage of Shooting Near SF State

While University alert systems remained silent, Citizen was there

On Monday, February 25th 2019 at 7:14pm, Citizen received a report of a shooting in the Parkmerced community neighborhood directly outside the San Francisco State University campus, instantly sending out an alert within a .81-mile radius.

Within the first minute, Citizen had already posted three in-app updates, informing Parkmerced residents and nearby Citizen users about the shooting and the fleeing suspect-at-large.

As Citizen user ‘kimberly_j0y’ began to broadcast live video from the police response, SFSU students were left wondering when the University was going to update the student body with their own internal alert system.

For full timeline, see below.

By the time SFSU acknowledged the shooting incident at 9:09 PM, nearly 2 hours after the incident occurred, Citizen had already sent 15 updates and 5 safety notifications, alerting 9,985 people within a 3-mile radius, keeping the nearby community fully-informed of the shooting and gunman on the loose.

Multiple Twitter users acknowledged that Citizen was the only source reporting on this shooting in real-time.

Citizen provides real-time information when other sources are silent, to keep communities safe, protected, and fully-informed.

Timeline

• 7:14pm — Citizen receives an unconfirmed report of a shooting in the Parkmerced community neighborhood directly outside the San Francisco State University campus, instantly sending alert to 870 users within .81 mile radius.
• 7:15pm—Citizen updates incident-feed to confirm police presence, along with a report that the suspect has fled towards SF’s 19th Ave thoroughfare.
• 7:19pm—Citizen user ‘kimberly_j0y’ goes live from site of police presence to keep the community informed while police search for suspect.
• 7:23pm—Police begin to set up crime scene, Citizen sends alert to 3,185 users within a 1.8 mile radius.
• 7:51pm—One victim has reportedly been shot twice, while multiple streets are closed off. A bullet casing is found as police continue to search for the suspect.
• 8:06pm—As the search continues, Citizen escalates notification radius to 3 miles and sends alert to 9,706 users to inform the community of a shooter-at-large.
• 9:09pm—First acknowledgement of shooting from SFSU appears on social media. Citizen has already delivered 15 updates and 3 safety alerts by this time.

Full in-app timeline here: https://i.citizen.com/-LZbmx9NFF6pb3sqYMnK

Citizen instantly sends safety alerts directly to your phone whenever significant crime or emergencies happen near you.

Correction: May 8, 2019

An earlier version of this article’s headline described the location of the shooting imprecisely. It was near the SF State campus, not within it.