New Black-owned app aims to protect people from police brutality

Police brutality against minorities, particularly African Americans, often dominates media discussions. Multiple advocacies to end police killings of unarmed Black men have yielded little results. 

The killing of George Floyd by the police is still fresh in the minds of the Black community. His killing led to massive protests across communities in the U.S. calling for an end to police profiling and killing of minorities.

Several tactics have been devised to capture incidents of police confrontations with Blacks but this has done little to change police attitudes towards Black men and women they arrest or engage.

In search of a comprehensive solution to make Black people feel safe when they get pulled over, arrested, or confronted by the police, a Black-owned firm, WestMason, has come up with an app for minorities to protect themselves.

WestMason has launched a mobile app called MyOneOne to provide a personal security network made up of the friends and families of its users. The app is currently available on Android and iOS, according to Black Business.

Eric Mills, CTO of WestMason, in a Youtube video, explained how the app works. “Myonone is an app to allow minorities in the underserve the ability to create lifelines where groups of individuals or a group of loved ones that you would like to contact in an emergence,” he said.

“Say, you are driving down the street and you get pulled over by the police, you feel unconformable, you feel unsafe, you are in the middle of nowhere and you do not know why you got pulled over in the first place, you can simply tap the alarm button and it will bring up a list of options for you in an emergence. One of those is, ‘I was pulled over by the police,’” he said.

He further explained that “if you feel uncomfortable in that situation, you hit the button, then your live stream is started from your phone where your love ones or your lifeline is alerted, they know you’ve been pulled over and a video automatically starts and they can view it.”

According to him, the significance of the app is that “you know you are not alone.”  The app allows users to:

• Create and maintain a lifeline consisting of friends and family.

• Alert your lifeline when in dangerous situations.

• Livestream from your device to your lifeline. Video is stored in a secure location for future review.

• Send location information to your lifeline.

• Contact emergency services with the same information as your lifeline. Coupled with health information and profile picture.