The Waze of Crime
Nadim Curi is the Co-Founder & CEO of Citycop, the world’s leading crime-fighting app. Hear his thoughts on technology’s increasing role in the fight against crime.
Interview by: Justin Harlow | Editor
JH: Today we’ll be talking about the use of technology in the fight against crime. We’re very lucky to have a good friend of mine, Nadim Curi, with us. Nadim’s the Co-Founder & CEO of Citycop, a leading crime-fighting app for Android and iOS. I was lucky enough to mentor Nadim as part of the Start-Up Chile program. Since then, they’ve gone from strength to strength, that’s probably because he’s not listening to me as much anymore. They’re now up to 200,000 users. They’re the leading platform in this space. They also recently participated in the Techstars acceleration program in Austin, Texas and that’s really given them a lot of momentum to push forward with their expansion into the U.S.
So, I’d love to start by having you tell us a little bit about Citycop. What is it and how does it work?
NC: Sure, thank you very much Justin for the invitation, it’s pleasure to be here. In a nutshell, Citycop is a social platform for community watch where any person can report a crime and send real-time alerts to other people who are doing the same. We are aggregating all of this information about crime, which today is fragmented and scattered everywhere or in many cases is not available at all. On one hand we are giving users the ability to report a crime in a few seconds and on top of that including all of these other sources of information, including official public safety reports, social media and other channels. It helps people and companies understand how safe a given area is in any part of the world.
We’re relying on our instincts and our experience to assume if an area is safe or not.
JH: How have you seen people change their behaviours as they use the app? Do you have any examples, any stories or statistics that can illustrate that?
NC: Yes, absolutely. In general terms, today we don’t have anything when it comes to public safety. We’re relying on our instincts and our experience to assume if an area is safe or not. When we are walking down the street, we are assuming that if we have a lot of light then it should be a safe area. Those kind of assumptions in most cases are not correct. With Citycop and this mobile app that we provide, people can easily understand in any given moment how safe they are and also can have this information for every interest area, their home, their work, their children’s school and receive it real-time.
JH: It sounds like you’re doing a great job of raising awareness and providing people with the information. I guess there are some places you still have to go to. If my home isn’t in a great place, it’s still my home. If my school is in a bad place, it’s still tough.
NC: Absolutely. The problem here is when you move outside of your common areas. I will give you a specific example that ironically happened to us. You mentioned Start-up Chile, we were living in Chile last year and we went to an area where Citycop wasn’t active yet. We went to a supermarket and left our car outside in the parking lot. When we went back outside after buying some stuff, our windows were smashed and some thieves stole some things from the inside. What happened there was that we were tourists from outside that area and we really didn’t know that it was a pretty common thing to happen there. We went inside to the supermarket and told the employees what had just happened and they came back with a phone book of reports of people saying that they had been robbed in the parking lot. The previous occurrence was a couple of hours before and the next one will probably be in the next couple of minutes or hours.
Once this information becomes public, the criminals basically have two options. They change their modus operandi when the information becomes public or they need to move elsewhere to do the same. In both cases, the risk for them getting caught is much more.
The problem that we are addressing here is that people are not even reporting to the authorities, for different reasons, for fear, for bureaucracy, over 70% of people today do not report to the authorities.
JH: I heard another comment you said relating to that on another interview you gave where you said putting this information in the public domain increases the symmetry of information between the public and criminals. Do you think criminals could ever use your app for their own benefit? Targeting areas where they don’t usually expect this type of crime or dealing drugs in areas that don’t have a lot of activity and therefore don’t have much supply. Do you think that could ever be done?
NC: Of course, this information is public. We’re not doing anything different in that sense than is going on today. There is a lot of information on social media, people are using Facebook or Twitter, talking about everything that is happening. The problem is that this information is scattered everywhere and we don’t have an easy way to access that information.
JH: It’s often assumed that law enforcement is left to public agencies. What do you think as a private company you can do differently to traditional law enforcement?
NC: The problem that we are addressing here is that people are not even reporting to the authorities, for different reasons, for fear, for bureaucracy, over 70% of people today do not report to the authorities. This is for Latin America and the US. There’s a lot of information not going to the authorities as official reports. This is why we are providing this platform, for everybody to report in a matter seconds. We are 100% open to provide this information to the authorities, to police departments, to cities, to make improvements in public safety. This is why we’re so convinced that this is the way to address this massive problem in crime.
JH: With respect to that 70% number of unreported crimes, just out of interest, how is that measured? It would be a fantastic thing for you guys to show that you reduced that number. How would you measure that on an ongoing basis?
NC: We get the numbers from the UN and the US Department of Justice. It depends on the type of crime, for instance murders are reported more, petty crimes are often unreported. They usually use interviews and polls where they ask people if they have been victims of crime. They also ask them if they heard about something whether they took any action with the official authorities with that incident.
JH: Do you ever have a problem with wrongful reporting?
NC: Yes, there’s always a percentage of the reports that we are getting, today it’s around 5% of the total information, that can be jokes or false reports. But, 5% is pretty low and we understand that people approach this with responsibility and there’s a strong sense of community between people using the platform. You see the value it has and you want to give and receive back. That’s what we’ve seen.
We also apply technology to keep that number going down. We employ different layers and filters. First, the community has the ability to report abuse of specific reports or by users on the platform. Then we collect information on the behaviour of our users. For example, how many reports they make per day and from what location. We use all of that information to create a score, a reputation for our users. We also employ artificial intelligence to create a probability score to determine if the reports are true or not.
JH: How do you measure the impact of your platform? Obviously as a for-profit business you would have traditional business metrics, but it’s also a social business that is doing a lot of good for the world as well. How do you measure impact and what are the goals?
NC: Today, we’re focused on growing our users and getting more traction. Our metrics and KPIs rely on how many users are we getting, if they’re getting any value from the platform, how are they using it, if we are growing by word of mouth, that’s very important because if you see the value you tell your friends and family. We have seen that so far, it’s amazing, it’s the best thing that can happen for us.
Every time we travel, we are exposed in areas we don’t know and that’s what criminals take advantage of. Real estate, every time we are looking for a place to live or rent, this is exactly the same problem, which area should we live in or not. Insurance of course is the same.
JH: I tell everybody I know, especially in the wild-west of Brooklyn. [laughter]
NC: We’ve been compared to Waze, what they have done for traffic globally has been amazing. I have a car and I use it almost every day. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do with Citycop, just addressing another problem, crime.
JH: It’s funny that you mention Waze. I was recently in Guatemala City. Waze and other GPS platforms are great, they send you the fastest route, but they don’t often send you the safest route. Fortunately, my trip was great, but the person who was with me told me about a story where they had a pretty unpleasant encounter and didn’t end up getting to their destination very fast at all because of security-related issues. Following on from that, you seem to have a lot of incredible data at your disposal. What uses do you see for that data? Waze may be one, any other ways you think this data could be useful in improving in peoples’ lives or company operations etc?
NC: Absolutely. We can talk about different industries. In the case of Waze, it’s transportation. Also travel, tourists are the most exposed. Every time we travel, we are exposed in areas we don’t know and that’s what criminals take advantage of. Real estate, every time we are looking for a place to live or rent, this is exactly the same problem, which area should we live in or not. Insurance of course is the same. These are all huge industries and the problem in the end is always the same. We don’t have an easy way to establish if an area is safe or not.
JH: What other opportunities do you see for the use of technologies like yours to help us in the fight against crime?
NC: Our vision here is to be the main source of information for public safety in the world and to even prevent crime. Today, there are algorithms, artificial intelligence and machine learning you can use, but all of these technologies and algorithms need information as an input.
Today, as we were saying, there is not enough information available and it’s scattered all around. Our mission is to prevent crime from happening, this kind of science fiction like the Minority Report with Tom Cruise, we really think that is going to be possible. It’s already happening, you have all this information and these algorithms can say that in the next 6 hours you have a 30–40% probability of the next crime happening here. This is already available, but these kind of systems need all of this information.
JH: Wrapping up, I’d love to get your thoughts on what technology’s role in fighting crime will look like in 10 or 20 years’ time. You mentioned future fiction, can we get Nadim’s view on some of the crazy stuff that may be happening either with Citycop or elsewhere? I would love to hear your thoughts.
NC: Regarding that, as I was saying, all of this technology is currently available, the problem is really the lack of information that the systems need to prevent crime. It’s already happening. For instance, IBM with Watson is really investing in predictive policing. They have some funny commercials when the police arrive at the location before the criminal has the chance to commit the crime. This is really going to happen. Of course, it’s a matter of resources, but we can dramatically decrease the crime rates using this kind of technology around the world.
JH: That’s fascinating stuff Nadim. Thanks for your time today. Always good to speak with a friend. Thanks for everything you and your team do to help keep our streets and communities safer.
NC: Absolutely Justin. Thank you very much for the information, it’s a pleasure to be here.
JH: I look forward to hearing all the great things you do in the next 12 months.
NC: You too, bye.
