Why I Deleted the Citizen App – liam waldman, ’22

Fear of crime exposes the dystopia of American Liberalism.

While shaving, I turned on an episode of Pod Save America and listened to the tune of comedians/politicians hark about why we should cover Trump more in the face of a looming re-candidacy. At this point in my life, I had just found out I was attending a leading small liberal arts school and was about to attend a birthday party at a house built by acclaimed architect Richard Neutra in the Pacific Palisades. I was, on paper at least, the liberal elite.

Except, I’m not. Somewhere in the low end of middle class, I had only recently begun to acknowledge how class had shaped my identity. While applying to colleges, I remember filling out financial documents and only then realizing how “poor” I really was. I say that in quotations because there is a slight amount of guilt that the terms connotes for me. Nearly my entire circle of friends are in the upper class. Conversations about Aspen ski trips and casual weekday lunches at fancy restaurants have become quite normal to me.

It is this upbringing that led me to a fascinating book titled The Privileged Poor, in which a Harvard Education professor writes about the upper hand that low-income students had at elite institutions if they already attended private high schools, like I did. This identity crisis has permeated my life for the past year or so.

While I was shaving, listening to an unmistakably liberal podcast, my phone let out a distinctive buzz. But I ignored the notification. And then another one came about three minutes later. But I brushed it off. A third notification popped up, but I was too busy focusing on not slicing my face open while listening to how Trump had exposed over 500 people to Covid before the presidential debate.

But when the fourth notification came up, I could no longer ignore it.

“Man Burglarizing Building”

“EMS Activity”

“Man, Woman Fighting”

“Police Activity”

The notifications all came from the Citizen App, which tracks local crime and notifies users. The app is particularly prominent in Los Angeles, with over 1.5 million users.

This was in the face of a hysteria-driven “crime wave” that was quite literally created out of thin air. As local media replayed clips of people burglarizing luxury stores, crime rates had actually fallen, and quite significantly at that. Cognizant of the effect that fear-driven rhetoric had on people, I began to question why I even used the Citizen app.

I like being in the know, and I also like map and statistics-driven information. That opinion is not unique and is what has allowed media sources such as Fivethirtyeight and Vox to thrive in the modern media space. Yet, the Citizen app seemed to contradict everything I stood for.

My vaccine card is now soft to the touch, crumpled and twisted with each removal from my wallet. Simultaneously it feels like March 2020 is tomorrow and some distant decade ago. One of the changes that has not yet left us is the need to feel like experts. With news and media playing a bigger role in my life during and after numerous lockdowns, I realized that as a collective society, news has become both a source of information and entertainment. Obsessing over data charts and positivity rates, I have coped with statistics to fill up the absence of reason that Covid has left me with. I suspect that this has bled over into other aspects of our lives as well.

Researching about housing policies in Los Angeles, I knew what the problem was, At least I felt I did. I interned for local candidates who ran on a pro-affordable-housing platform and offered lengthy rants to friends and family on who they ought to vote for. I had seen my friend’s father, who exclusively voted on the progressive-leaning side of Democrats, ramble on about the missteps and faults that homeless people had made. He was simultaneously for the housing of the unhoused, but in the same breath criticized the people living in camper vans down the street from him and how affordable housing was just ugly and boring. I realize that whenever the seemingly progressive have the chance to actually make progress, they find a convenient excuse to stifle it.

Coincidentally, I have my own contradiction to deal with. The citizen app clearly uses fear to justify its existence. The idea that we must know about every single robbery taking place in the few miles around us also justifies being scared of a “rise” in crime, which justifies knowing about every crime in the first place. This addictive cycle is what keeps LA residents in the firm grip of the Citizen app.

The pattern was most apparent in last year’s Palisades fire, where the Citizen CEO ordered his employees to spur a manhunt for the arsonist using the app’s database of users. He sent out notification after notification asking for any sightings of the arsonist, each time with a higher prize for any tips. This led to the unfounded report of a man on the loose after allegedly starting the fire. The man was not, in fact, the arsonist. More importantly, Citizen had riled up its database of millions of Angelenos to catch a suspect in the hopes that, maybe, Citizen could be the good guy.

Citizen has been trying to win over the approval of police in other ways as well. Partnering with the LAPD, Citizen created surveillance cars that drove around Hispanic and black neighborhoods just because police couldn’t overpolice quite enough beforehand.

As much as I’d like to analyze the intersection between crime, surveillance, policing, and technology, I have to also understand my own place in this equation.

I vividly remember using the Citizen app during the Palisades fire. Because local news wouldn’t broadcast any unfounded reports, I was struggling to understand the fire that was affecting friends. Citizen, however, was sending out reports that were far from truthful, because they thrived on clicks, and those clicks stem from fear.

Fear causes crime but also is the result of it. It is this fear that led me to fall victim to over-dramatization of crime and, at worst, fake news about crime.

This fear, I fear, controls those who, unfortunately, hold power in not only the Democratic process, but Democrats themselves. Joe Biden, for example, received over six and a half million dollars in itemized contributions in his run for President. $6.25 million came from white donors. Only $110,000 came from African American donors. That disparity is repeated in elections, often in even larger proportions, across local, mayoral, and senate races. 20% of Biden voters were Black, even larger in swing states, but campaign contributions by Black Democrats remained far behind White Democrats. Unfortunately, our political system relies heavily on campaign contributions, and if the donors are white and wealthy, politicians will continue to center their priorities around those white and wealthy donors.

I fear that Citizen has become another symptom of the Karen-ization of Democrats. Even if Democrats theoretically support defunding the police and prioritizing rehabilitation, the unfounded, often emotional fear of crime renders the party incredibly tone-deaf, and, elitist.

I make these rash generalizations and unfounded points, not because I’m uninformed, but because I have lived experiences that force me to take that position. I have been disenfranchised by the liberal elite: my friends, neighbors, classmates. I lie just on the brink of the liberal elite, close enough to understand the prioritization of comfort, education, and safety. On the other hand, I am socio-economically different enough to see just how vast amounts of wealth, best described as “f-you money,” has tarnished the ideological dreams of Democrats.

The Democrat is no longer a single person. The Democrat is no longer united by policy or by lived experience. If Joe Manchin can have that much power, who even are we? Who even am I?

Perhaps America has substituted the idea of Liberals with the classically populist viewpoints of billionaires. People, particularly rural Republicans, view Democrats as incredibly out of touch.

But we know this. Joe Manchin knows it. Kirsten Synema knows it. They are willing to stop Democratic progress— or rather permit Democratic backsliding— to be seen as more centrist and patriotic to the very people who would never vote for them.

What if we just didn’t care? If we over-bargain with Republicans we become out of touch with the policies we advocate for— basic things like voting rights and healthcare. We would be better people—better Americans—if we focused on the things that mattered.

I’m not sure if I can even consider myself a Democrat anymore, and my fear is that I’m not alone. If crime can make me— make us— forget about truth, humanity, and equality, then are we a party, or just a reaction?