FAQs

What is CrimeSpotter?
CrimeSpotter is a communication platform that connects active citizens, residents, security companies, CPFs and the police.
It is designed to allow open sharing of local incidents for crime prevention and planning. It is a data aggregator to build a central database of trending crime. Information is public and provided freely to citizens, security, emergency services and the police.

Does this link to emergency services?
CrimeSpotter will be used by Community Policing Forums (CPFs), private security companies and the police.  As you post reports nearby users are notified immediately up to a radius of 10km. Depending on your location these users include security services, emergency services and first responders.

There are 1144 police stations in South Africa which have CPF offices who are linked to police and emergency services who will be monitoring the communication on the CrimeSpotter system. In this structure we expect a level of response that will vary from area to area, dependant of the local resources.

Always use the traditional emergency channels available to you, to report your emergencies or incidents for optimal response times and follow it up by reporting on CrimeSpotter to alert other users nearby and add to the central database.

Can I report past incidents from weeks ago?
Yes, you can report incidents as far back as you wish. The point is to gather data to establish trends for better policing and awareness.
Incidents that are older than 48 hours will not notify nearby users as the incident has long past.

Is there a security company behind this?
Not a single security company, but many. All security companies will be using CrimeSpotter.
There are 9,000 registered security companies active in South Africa with around 450,000 private security guards. All security companies are welcomed to participate. As the more active they are in the app, the more the residents of the local area will see their participation and possibly subscribe to their services.

Are the crime reports legal?
Reports are not officially documented and it does not create a legal case with your local police, this is a community reporting and alert system. You will need to report the incident to your local police, should you want to open a case of make a formal legal report.
The goal of CrimeSpotter is to record crime information and share alerts for improved crime prevention and policing.

Why is this FREE? Is there a catch?
Completely free with no hidden costs.

Are my crime reports private?
Your crime reports are shared publicly. Although you can report incidents anonymously.
Crime information gathered is freely available to all parties for better resource planning and prevention.

Is my information private?
Your contact information is ALWAYS private and will not be seen by anyone unless you share it on your public profile description of in chat with other members or on crime report comments. Your crime reports are of course public but you can report crimes anonymously.
You can delete your profile at any time and your profile information is removed from the system completely.

Who funded this initiative?
This has been completed developed by the team at In-Detail and coding privately funded.

Can I donate to help maintain and further develop this idea?
YES please! We can use any help we can get as it has been a long and costly journey and we still have lots to do.
Please buy us a coffee : )

Is this a snitching system to report neighbours having parties or dogs barking?
Take a look at the crime types in the app. This is for real crimes only. Keep your snitching to your local Whatsapp groups : )