The Vigilante Manifesto

Interesting idea, but highly unfortunate name. Why choose something with such negative connotations in this context?

Your claim about 2015 murder rates seems to be fear-mongering, from where I stand. The murder rate nationally is at a 51 year low, even with the 2015 uptick[1].

What exactly is the aim here? Your question "Could we restore trust between law enforcement and community" doesn't seem to be answered in the post, and the implication that your app could do this seems dubious.

Is you aim to get people to flock to 911 calls and film them? That seems like what the post is driving at, but never directly says.

[1]https://mises.org/blog/fbi-us-homicide-rate-51-year-low

Additionally, the focus on murder rates is flawed for a few reasons:

1) Murders are not evenly distributed in most (all?) cities. In Chicago, for example, violence is heavily concentrated in certain areas. That means it's not a generalized problem yet this app doesn't address that clustering in a meaningful way.

2) Murders are not the crime that most people will feel comfortable intervening in – and, arguably, not one that is most high-value to report in the moment – unless you're focusing on armed, trained responders – who are likely going to be Police (unless we're getting into militia here and that's a whole different discussion). Instead, less violent offenses seem more manageable as a starting point. What if a purse snatching was reported?

To be honest, I'm still not sure what value the app provides – generally speaking, this looks to encourage mob justice which is fraught with risk of mistaken identity and violations of individual rights.

For the creators – what, specifically, are you looking for members of the public to do?

This strikes me as another one of the AWARENESS!! "solutions" – assuming that awareness is the problem – honestly, especially in crime solving, I don't think that's the issue. Awareness of identifiable precursors to crime? That'd be really useful (what they are, I have no clue). Awareness of active shooter situations? Also useful – but much more rare and less about fixing an more about avoiding for the general user...

In your video: "This is a real app, and these are real users."

What does that even mean?

"Real users" in this case means you downloaded a copy of the app onto their phone, before you started directing the actors?