Police are assuring the public that the department’s new app—which allows users to snap and submit photos as “tips” through a smartphone—that the free download won’t be used as a public-facing platform for warring neighbors or spouses.
Many residents have connected mobile devices and the app is designed to “open up another avenue for people to contact us,” Capt. Vincent DeMaio said at the Police Commission meeting Wednesday.
Here’s the main menu in the new app from New Canaan Police. It’s not for emergencies.
“It’s just another outreach tool for us, to try and get a little more connected to the community, and in real time,” DeMaio said during the meeting, held in the New Canaan Police Department Training Room.
Speaking as a resident rather a selectman, New Canaan’s Beth Jones had raised concerns about the MyPD app, which empowers users to submit tips under categories such as “Traffic Concerns,” “Drug Activity” and “Vandalism/Graffiti” and to snap and/or attach photos from their smartphone camera rolls.
“You all know I have the deepest respect for our chief and the commission and I don’t think this was done with anything but good intentions, but I am concerned about the new police app and the way that works anonymously and I’m afraid it could be detrimental to community feelings, if there are people who use it as a vendetta kind of thing or neighbor-against-neighbor and I just want to urge you to be very careful that we don’t do damage to the community,” Jones said.
With the new “MyPD” app from the New Canaan Police Department, users may submit tips including photos. The app is not to be used for emergencies.
She added: “I just think the way Patch worked in town and the way anonymous things work in general, it concerns me. I just would like you to be vigilant in not letting it turn into a Patch kind of situation.”
Those tips go directly to Police Chief Leon Krolikowski, Capt. John DiFederico and DeMaio—and no one else, the chief said.
“All three of us get various notifications,” he said.
Jones said she could envision people who are having difficulty using the app to zing each other and it “getting out of hand.”
“Taking pictures that just seems a little Big Brother-ish—to have your neighbors take pictures of you and send them in, for whatever reason,” she said.
DeMaio said that in those situations, neighbors often try to sway the police to their point of view about a perceived foe in any case, app or no app.
“People in these situations they pit us against their enemies anyhow,” he said. “We go through same process to vet that out.”