“Citizen, and the premium version, is not the panacea. It will not fix the world’s problems. It will not stop crime from happening all over the world. It’s not that,” Chandler says. “But it is a very powerful way for marginalized communities to make their voices heard.”
“Unfortunately, they don’t have a Chinese helper”
“While the idea of Citizen is brilliant … I do come to this with a healthy dose of skepticism because of the uniqueness of our community,” says OCA’s Kosai. “One of the things that I’m always thinking about is, how accessible is it to members who are most vulnerable?”
He notes that the Asian group within the US encompasses “50 different ethnicities and 100 different languages spoken” and that “different communities interact differently with local law enforcement around these kinds of public safety issues.”
Currently, Citizen is simply accessible in English. To be really efficient, it should supply its providers in Chinese or different Asian languages, says Jessica Chen, government director of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. (In an e-mail, Citizen’s Stone mentioned it’s “actively investing” in natural-language processing that “will enable us to translate the app into different languages in real time,” however didn’t supply specifics or a timeline on these efforts.)
And on a purely logistical degree, it may be tough to assist a gaggle undertake a know-how when its members have various ranges of technical and information literacy—much more so when English isn’t their first language. Senior residents specifically are additionally prone to need assistance navigating something from signing up for the platform to deciphering the data it brings to their consideration.
“Do I have time to teach them? Am I the right person teaching them?” asks Chen.
Josephine Hui, a 75-year-old who has lived in Oakland for 4 many years and often commutes to Chinatown to work as a monetary educator, was amongst a number of aged individuals who not too long ago realized in regards to the app at a Citizen-sponsored occasion cohosted by the Asian Committee on Crime, a nonprofit involved with issues of safety in Oakland, and the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. She was there to see public security displays by the Oakland Police Department.
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“I think [Citizen] is a wonderful app for any people walking on the streets,” she informed me there. “Unfortunately, they don’t have a Chinese helper yet.”