
Formerly incarcerated software engineers built a no-police alternative to 911 - alexqin
https://medium.com/@emergentworks/meet-the-formerly-incarcerated-software-engineers-who-built-a-no-police-alternative-to-911-5a5af163f8b2
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bleah1000
This seems like an ad for this company without any real description about how
it's supposed to work.

For example, domestic abuse calls can be the most dangerous for police, so how
does not involving the police work? Who would show up to these?

How does choosing an agency help with homelessness?

In fact, what prevents the agencies getting these calls from turning around
and calling the police themselves?

Maybe I'm being cynical, but I think this is not going to do anything. An app
can't solve these problems, you need to staff agencies with people and train
them to handle different situations. If you wanted to help, you might want to
send specially trained people along with the normal police who handle certain
types of situations. For example, sending someone who is an expert in mental
health to many different calls so they can help identify and help handle
situations with emotionally unstable people.

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leetcrew
unless I'm missing something, it seems to be a glorified directory service. I
don't know the fire department's number off the top of my head, but if I saw a
fire and it was really important to me that the police not respond, I would
probably just google their number rather than go through some app.

edit: I just looked at their website and now I'm really confused. the app
itself directs you to just call 911 for any life-threatening emergency.

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alexqin
"Being able to circumvent the police and still get your needs met is a
beautiful thing." Not911 ([http://not911.nyc](http://not911.nyc)) is an app
built by Emergent Works, where teams are comprised of at least 50% justice-
involved software engineers.

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jarofgreen
Where did the data come from, and how will they make sure it is kept up to
date?

[https://openreferral.org/](https://openreferral.org/) may be of interest

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Cheyana
This seems like a great example of technology being used to address a social
ill.

