Helpful, but Regularly Negative & Paranoia Inducing
This app is certainly helpful for crime info and being aware of what kind of commotion is happening throughout the city. Although- something that is obnoxious about this app is when notifications are sent out to all users of a city or nationwide, it’s regularly discouraging or negative information. I think I’ve seen maybe one or two positive information notifications. I could see this app fueling people’s paranoia or triggering fear on the regular for some. It’s not helpful when notifications regularly paint a grim picture of COVID-19 or constantly reporting upticks in COVID or crime in the area on a regular basis. I think Citizen needs to fix their information approach. Stay objective of course, but there needs to be a better approach with information reporting.
I’ve had this app for a few years now, and I really enjoyed it previously. Unfortunately, every single time I open this app now, I'm bombarded with subscription notices. If you are not paying for this app, you can't really get access to much of anything. Some alerts are free, but many alerts require a paid subscription to even see what the incident is. On the incidents which are free, if you listen or watch any of the videos some stop midway and tell you that you cannot finish the recording unless you upgrade your subscription. What's the point of having a "free app," if I then have to pay to find out what the incident is? I might as well not have the app! Other problems with the application is the false alerts and unmonitored comments. The comments most of the time are rude; which often range between blaming the homeless or victims in incidences. There's no monitoring comments... beside the "don't be rude" warning you get when opening the chat box. There's a number of alerts that come through that aren't verified. Verified alerts are part of the subscription, so you very likely will get false alerts. This app relies heavily on its users as it's sources, yet turns around and makes you pay for the content they aren't paying for themselves. For a free application that was meant to let citizens know of major incidents happening around them for their safety, it sure feels like they have prioritized their own pockets before the users.
I've had this app for a couple of years now, and I really enjoyed it previously. Unfortunately, every single time I open this app now, I'm bombarded with subscription notices. If you are not paying for this app, you can't really get access to much of anything. Some alerts are free, but many alerts require a paid subscription to even see what the incident is. On the incidents which are free, if you listen or watch any of the videos some stop midway and tell you that you cannot finish the recording unless you upgrade your subscription. What's the point of having a "free app," if I then have to pay to find out what the incident is? I might as well not have the app! Other problems with the application is the false alerts and unmonitored comments. The comments most of the time are rude; which often range between blaming the homeless or victims in incidences. There's no monitoring comments... beside the "don't be rude" warning you get when opening the chat box. There's a number of alerts that come through that aren't verified. Verified alerts are part of the subscription, so you very likely will get false alerts. This app relies heavily on its users as it's sources, yet turns around and makes you pay for the content they aren't paying for themselves. For a free application that was meant to let citizens know of major incidents happening around them for their safety, it sure feels like they have prioritized their own pockets before the users.
I've had this app for over a year now, and I really enjoyed it previously. Unfortunately, every single time open this app now, I'm bombarded with subscription notices. If you are not paying for this app, you can't really get access to much of anything. Some alerts are free, but many alerts require a paid subscription to even see what the incident is. On the incidents which are free, if you listen or watch any of the videos some stop midway and tell you that you cannot finish the recording unless you upgrade your subscription. What's the point of having a "free app," if I then have to pay to find out what the incident is? I might as well not have the app! Other problems with the application is the false alerts and unmonitored comments. The comments most of the time are rude; which often range between blaming the homeless or victims in incidences. There's no monitoring comments... beside the "don't be rude" warning you get when opening the chat box. There's a number of alerts that come through that aren't verified. Verified alerts are part of the subscription, so you very likely will get false alerts. This app relies heavily on its users as it's sources, yet turns around and makes you pay for the content they aren't paving for themselves. For a free application that was meant to let citizens know of major incidents happening around them for their safety, it sure feels like they have prioritized their own pockets before the users.
I liked that if I heard sirens I could open up the app to see what was going on. However, recently the app has been updated to basically reduce the amount of local information that’s brought to users. Before the update, I could scroll through a long list of incidents in the area and see dozens of dots throughout my community. Now I only see a handful of incidents in my local area. There is a long list of trending incidents such as… a mudslide in Beverly Hills? An incident in the Bronx? Both of which are several hundred miles away from me?? I don’t understand why the list of “trending incidents” from cities that aren’t even remotely close to my own is longer than the list of incidents in my own city, or why I can even see those incidents in the first place. If I was connected to people who live in those cities, maybe that would make sense, but I don’t really care about a two-vehicle collision that happened on an interstate in Chicago. If it’s significant enough, I’ll see it in the news. If they change the app back to the way it was, it would be really helpful if there was a way to sort the list of incidents, such as by most recent or by proximity. The list of incidents didn’t seem to be in any particular order and you’d have to comb through them to find what was happening in the last few minutes versus incidents that occurred several hours ago.
To begin with, I use citizen in the LA region, this is a nice app to have on hand just cause theres helpful reference of alerts in my area. Great examples would be of Covid alerts and other Major Event alerts. First problem that comes up is constant and inconsistent changes to parts of the app. Layouts will be different (sometimes from alert to a different alert) and glitchy. I dont mind redesigns, but why is glitchy and different each time in small shorts-pans. I rather the app gets no changes for a while and comes out with a less buggy update. Second of is user to user interaction, why have replies if there is no way to revisit quickly to see if someones reply. Furthermore, the comments section itself are very buggy. And now lastly, the lack of moderation, blatantly bigoted, racist, homophobic, hateful rhetoric and other harmful comments are made constantly on it. And it flies. Its hard to continually keep reporting comments if theres so many, and the UI constantly bugs out. (To Note: I have an iPhone 14 with the latest IOS and most current update of the Citizen app) I want citizen to be aware of the type of audience they’re attracting and to take time into their app as a whole. Please invest more into the programming staff and make this app better. Right now as it stands, not much is keeping me here. And it’s unfortunate because it has potential.
I’ve had this app for a while, even convinced many others to download it for themselves. It used to be worth it. Slowly they’ve added more and more “subscription” features but at the beginning they didn’t affect the free and standard safety features of the app. It used to be a separate section, but now the “subscription” has taken over the whole thing. I still get notifications of reported incidents nearby but beyond that notification on my lock screen, I won’t ever find the report again. When I search my area for it, the only incidents that come up are from prior weeks or months and you need the subscription to even view them. I’m not even looking for the weeks old incidents anyhow, let alone want to pay for them. As a single female in a big city, this app used to help me and make me feel safe. Now it’s pointless and doesn’t help me at all. I can’t look up recent incidents in my area without having to pay for my own public safety, and it makes me less inclined to help out others in my area if something is happening nearby. If you want to have a subscription section, go for it, but don’t let it affect the whole interface of the app. Keep them separate. Make your money or lose your users and integrity? Which one holds more value to you?
I’ve used Citizen for probably five years now. But as they continue to push on ways to get paid, they have neglected core functionality. Specifically, there is a setting to dictate the radius of which you expect to be notified of activities/crime. Mine is set to 2.5 miles. As in, alert me to any activity 2.5 miles or closer. This simply does not work. I live in the greater Los Angeles area, and I get notifications from all over. Of course I feel awful about the barricaded suspect shooting at police, or the missing dogs, or the elderly person gone missing three days ago. But when it’s 20 or 25 miles away, where I can not help, nor am I impacted directly, these alerts do nothing other than stress me out. They put a pay wall around this notification setting. And seemingly while doing so, they broke its functionality. I try to slide it up or down, am told I need to get premium, and it resets back to 2.5 miles. If only it respected the 2.5 miles I would be all set, but instead I’m hearing about a crimes two hours away. I still use the app, but I turned off all notifications. I don’t need my Apple Watch going off every 10 minutes for incidents that simply are not relevant to my area or my family. I emailed their support and received no response. Unfortunate.
I just installed this app about 30 mins ago and was immediately confronted with subscribing to Citizen’s premium service. It was then suggested that I allow access to my contacts so that I could add my Emergency contacts, which meant I would be sending invites to join Citizen to each contact I would add (given they do not already use Citizen). Last but not least, I was warned that I need to enable & allow the app to always allow access to my phone’s location. I then decided to look around and saw that there was no notification fence to limit a certain area of interest, for example 1.4 mile radius. I closed the app & when I later opened it, I was again met with being asked to subscribe to the premium service. It was then I did a web search on the legitimacy of this app & though this app is legitimate, it is not officially supported by official sources & notifications are driven by employees of Citizen listening & combing through police scanners, as well as crowd-sourced. This is troubling for me b/c without official support, there is a potential for false alerts b/c of the lack of oversight (verification) which in turn is extremely dangerous in today’s society. I will not be using this app for this reason in addition to the constant push for the premium service. Until this app is officially supported I cannot recommend this app.
As a security officer who’s always getting notifications of gunman literally a blocks away, I hate that I can’t hear the police say the description of the shooter/ gun flasher because there’s a report a half city block from me that he’s on the loose targeting security officers…idk what he looks like because you request us to pay for something that really shouldn’t require payment. Do you need to pay to scroll the news? No you don’t. Do I have to pay a police officer to tell me the description of a criminal? No I don’t because they’re providing a public service and aren’t greedy. They actually want to help. So instead of making us pay for this, actually create something that you can make money off of because at this point you’re just saving the rich who can afford this which is probably 20% of your downloads and 60% of your revenue. Making it free will help/ save people. What am I going to do with hearing only 3 seconds of the dispatch recording huh? That’s enough time to say “suspect” and that’s it. Get off your high horse, realize you won’t be able to sell this app ever because you don’t want to help people you just want to tease them for money. But whatever, right? Who cares if this gunman comes to kill me, right? You’re obviously on the line between supporting people and criminals.
I downloaded this app months ago and barely used it. I’ve worked in public safety and love to keep up with what’s going on in my area so thought I give it a try. I’ve had police scanner apps and others including my personal favorite, Pulse Point. Well the other day I got a Citizen notification for a traffic Crash 1.5miles away. So I naturally go on pulse point to listen to the local FD. Pulse point allows you to see in real time what calls FDA are on and even listen to the scanner feeds. To my believe there wasn’t any reported accident! Hmm strange but didn’t think anything of it. Well now the last few days I’ve been getting accident notifications however I’m unable to verify it on Pulse point. Nothing! So either Citizen app are creating false reports to keep me engaged on the app or there’s a serious flaw in the app. Which gets me into the next flaw. You have to pay a ridiculous amount a month to “feel safe” with this app even tho it’s not accurate. Like others have said you’re better off looking on social media or having the ring app. Note pulse point is only for FDs so it doesn’t have police info but it was the app I used to fact check Citizens app. So if your still looking for a app that shows police activity you’ll need to keep searching because citizens app is not it.
Do not download this app. It’s a dumpster fire that only gets worse.
I had this app months ago when they didn’t have a premium service and it was nice to see what sort of things were happening in the are but they would frequently alert me that “*my wife* had been in extreme proximity to a (shooting, car crash, etc…)” which was all a marketing ploy to try get me to open the app and look through the ads they’d serve so they could get paid. They essentially would fabricate a near personal crisis for users to get them to use the app. How horrid, disgusting, inhumane and most of all— manipulative. I recently downloaded to see if I could figure out some info on a recent collision at a crossroads near my work and any sort of relevant info is locked behind a paywall with misleading information and false incidents posted frequently to try to get you to upgrade to the full premium service. They don’t care about public safety, information, or their customers. All they want is a quick buck in any dirty way they can get it. Don’t support the low life devs who designed this it’s an awful glimpse in how people use technology and information to exploit others emotionally and financially. What a scam. Google some news in your area if you need reliable, trustworthy and free information that won’t rob you of your self respect.
Text messages alerts from users who are also on this is an app
I’ve recently installed this app on my phone and I’ve added some of my contacts who currently uses the citizen app. The issue I’m having is whenever those contacts text me I have absolutely no way to know that they text me unless I physically unlock my phone and check my text messages. There are absolutely no alerts at all to prompt me to check my phone whenever I receive a text message. I’ve contacted tech-support after trying everything within the app and on my phone to troubleshoot this issue myself. It is taking them over 12 days to simply answer my question as to why this is happening. Meanwhile, this has been happening for months now since installing this app on my phone and it is becoming a major inconvenience. I will give them a few days and if nothing has been resolved I will be deleting the app, contacting everyone whom I’ve added and shared this app with to let them know that I’m no longer using it. I could also go on and on about the types of notifications that I am receiving in conjunction to the area where I live and the privacy concerns. It’s just not worth the headache in my opinion, but this would make this review too long and the information contained within may not be red because it is so long.
I loved this app a couple of years ago, but somehow it got deleted from my phone. this morning, I hear about 20 firetrucks and police cars driving by my house saw, something big is going on. The sirens continue for minutes and I think to myself “let me jump on Citizen and see what’s happening“ – it takes me 10 minutes to get back to the app, with lots of requests to pay for things along the way. I signed up for a free trial because, why not. I get to the main screen, and there are literally no incidents logged at all, there’s like two things that happened yesterday. I live in San Francisco, it’s not some quiet town, where maybe nothing happens. i’m thinking I’m on the wrong screen and clicking around trying to find something that might show me real time things happening, and all I’m seeing our ads to sign up for this family protection plan but it’s not what I’m looking for, I am literally just trying to see if anyone has any information about the 20 firetrucks driving by my house. You would think that would be a big deal and Garner attention on this app. But no. Immediately deleted my trial and was so annoyed about the whole experience that I’m writing my first review for any app ever.
I've been a paying customer for a year or so, and the first disturbing thing you find out sooner or later is that they actually have a committee to decide whether a crime should go on the map or not. In other words, the reality the map represents is "moderated." They say they judge in terms of "public safety" criteria, but of course, the obvious thing to do is let the person who pays for the app decide what is important to his safety. For example, today a big protest shut down the freeway in Oakland I-880 northbound, a major artery, for several hours and already they've removed the event from the map. Normally events can remain on the maps for weeks and months but they decided to remove this one from the map within hours? That's too much "moderation." Unfortunately I can't find a substitute for this app, so even though what it offers is inaccurate, it might be better than nothing. They probably count on that. In my opinion, if they had proved trustworthy in straightforwardly providing an information service, they might really be worth twenty bucks a month, but as it is you're just paying for what they decide they want you to know. Sorry, that's not good enough.
As stated, this used to be the best app out there in terms of getting up to date news. But it’s been reduced to seeing limited information about what’s going on in my little neighborhood and quite frankly? I don’t care about what’s going on in my neighborhood. You used to be able to see alerts from all over the country, then you had to navigate an extra step to see news from neighborhoods you subscribed too. Then you couldn’t see anything from any neighborhood but your own unless you paid. I downloaded Citizen years ago to keep tabs on what’s going in the larger city where I work every single day. The up to date news alerts came over sometimes faster than they’d come over on my friends police scanners. It was impressive. And I really didn’t mind paying for the quality they were once providing. However, even behind the paywall they make it IMPOSSIBLE to see the information I paid for and get alerts about it. I cancelled the subscription and now I’m deleting the app. There’s way better apps that deliver the exact same information in the exact same way that Citizen used too but I do hope they come to their senses and change things back one day.
This review process is corrupt. Apple keeps deleting negative reviews - but, look closely and you'll see many are the exact same review! Apart from the insane number of ads you'll get spammed with, the only other features of this app is fearmongering and a platform to some of the most racist, bigoted people with a penchant for death porn. While I can appreciate having insight into my neighborhood, I don't appreciate a buggy app with no developer resolution. For month the app's window exceeds the screen size so there's missing text and images. They respond to some reviews with boilerplate but don't actually repair anything. Citizen's response was they were aware and would fix it - that was months ago. Attempting to navigate the Live Video and upload is a nightmare - most videos are rotated all over the place as people try to figure it out. And just about everything you click on, or they notify you about, is an ad for Premium. I cannot imagine paying for this - Premium gives you sex offender locations, ability to see older posts and Responder recordings without the ads; and, they allege a professional can be reached to make you feel safer. I don't need that.
Why are you trying to charge me for information I get free online?!
I was recently going through the sexual offenders in my area and realized that I have to pay to see who they are! This is kind of ridiculous when I can go online and specifically find every single sex offender in my area, including a picture, and a description of their offenses. I used to really get a good use out of this app, especially having teens who like to go out and about, but now everything is about money and subscriptions and pop ups and blocking content for payment. It would make more sense to charge a small one time fee for access to at least most of the app. (Idea: maybe You can charge additionally for other conveniences on someone’s particular route etc. so you all can keep making “income” off of this app) It feels wrong to have to pay, when the local news catches most of this, & Especially when regarding SEXUAL OFFENDERS INFO! They are legally required to register and put on a public domain! How dare you make people pay to see something like this, that can avoid some real harm to kids in communities all over.
This app was extremely useful years ago but has become nothing but a money grab and it’s honestly kinda gross. They’ve added a map layer that shows you how many sex offenders are around you but you have to pay to see the photos and read the info for said offenders. Like at least support keeping women and children safe without a fee!! Tell me a man runs this app without telling me a man runs this app. You can’t listen to audio without paying. And I guess you can’t see videos either now unless you pay. Videos users are posting for free, mind you. The comments used to be helpful neighbors chiming in but no one takes the app serious anymore so now it’s more often than not just a bunch of sick humor and snarky sometimes vile replies (and I’m a girl with dead parents and hella dark humor about it so when I’m disgusted that’s saying something.) Citizen is losing quality all while features disappear for the poors. And it’s the poorer neighborhoods with the higher crime rates - people who can’t afford to pay can no longer be as informed to keep themselves safe. It’s really unfortunate and short-sighted. Or maybe it’s just pure greed.
I signed up for this app over a year ago. Used it very often then all of a sudden, when trying to sign in , I kept receiving a message; retry over count. Tried a few more times, receiving same pop up message. Then received a message to try again in 24 hours. Waited until next evening, tried once again to sign in, same lock out. After 2 weeks of this issue, I emailed support. They told me to do same thing as previous pop up messages. Let them know, already had done exactly what had been suggested and had deleted app and downloaded again before contacting support so when they said to try deleting, had already tried. I decided to try it again, now that tech support was supposedly looking into my account and why this was occurring. Waiting 24 hours -48 hours and deleting app, then downloading again several times over a Month, NEVER heard from support again, I decided to rate & write this review. Such a shame to have a possible useful app tool But, what good is it, if you can’t get signed in and when asking Citizen Support to help correct/resolve bugs/issues and they don’t, well……..?!!😡
I absolutely love this app. I think it’s a genius idea! I can’t imagine that amount of work and details that goes into creating something like this. However I think there are still many improvements and changes that can and should be made. Personally some ideas and things I notice right away that could be changed: - customizable notifications, for example option to set a miles scale radius of where you want to be notified, specific types of incidents you do and don’t want notifications for, being able to choose notification alert sounds for different incidents - importantly, it’d be helpful and interesting if there were more details and updates given for these situations. I see a lot of people in the comments saying this as well, one small example is parents asking if the “man with a gun” is actually happening and wanting details because it’s near a school that’s about to end for the day and never getting an answer - a section available at the bottom bar where you can set up a list of saved customized addresses/cities/locations that you want to more easily check on - could add at the bottom of the incident links to other sources like news articles There are all kinds of new features and changes to existing features that could make this app better. This app is genius and I can see it becoming much more known and widely used in the future! Continued improving will ensure that too.
I like the app but it would be more helpful if the videos were posted in chronological order or if they had time stamps. I was just following an important event in my neighborhood and I had a hard time figuring out if there were new developments and videos would have helped, especially because the updates being posted in real time were confusing and accurate. Since there is no time stamp on them (unless you select each video individually, select the user, then select the video again) it is impossible to determine if new ones have been added, so you have to keep scrolling through them. It’s very impractical when you have numerous videos to go through. Also, there should be better monitoring of the videos posted (some of them are completely useless). And there should be an age limit. Children should not be playing with this app. There was a five alarm fire tonight in my neighborhood and a young boy was playing reporter with his parents’ permission. Unacceptable and disrespectful. Other than that, it’s a very useful app.
Such a great app, despite the constant henpecking to to upgrade. I completely understand that developers, like all the rest of us, need to make a living, and they have the right to charge for anything they choose when it comes to an app they designed. Consumers then choose what to buy based upon the value the app brings to them. Unfortunately, the developer's approach now feels like a bait (scary alerts, connections with neighbors, awesome information... for free) and switch (see how much you like it? Now you're going to pay for it). Nothing wrong with charging for this, and then evaluate how to evaluate and manage the resultant customer loss. Only the developer knows their own revenue loss tolerance and acceptable growth rate. There are many ways to generate revenue, and depending on what customers do in response to what is now a useless app unless you pay $5 per month, the developer may or may not put forth the effort to come up with an alternative revenue raising plan, perhaps one which is less dependent upon pay walls being forced between the customer and any sort of useful information. Byeeeeeee........
Beware of the “premium safety service”/“protect service” which is one quick click (with only a tiny “skip” in the top right corner) and seems like part of the set up process but actually is a $199 (!!!) charge if not cancelled after the 14 day free trial. I find it interesting that if you want to buy a $1 coffee using your phone you have to use Touch ID, or enter every single detail of your credit card, or some form of ridiculous, excessive verification, but they can basically deceive people into buying a $199 subscription with no verification. Not to mention the fact that Apple buries subscriptions within your phone, and the ability to cancel it, so users who aren’t familiar with iPhone minutiae won’t know how to terminate it. Or will have to deal with a huge headache of trying via Apple support. And let’s be honest they won’t refund it after the fact when you get the surprise charge from Apple on your statement and call to dispute it. Which is so messed up cause they clearly designed the set up to intentionally deceive! People are hurting right now and this is what companies that we rely on for Covid updates are doing to its users! And Apple allows it. Disgusting.
The app used to be usable now it’s exclusively pay to use garbage
The app used to let you enter your address and we’ll as friends and families locations so you could get up to date notifications about what’s happening in those areas. Now that feature among many others, that used to be free are locked behind a pay wall. The app used to give you city wide coverage of what was going on, now it only notifies you of events taking places at a maximum distance of 2.5MILES unless you pay for their stupid subscription service and they are asking an absurd price for it, especially considering most of this used to be free. It went from an app that was 8/10 usable without buying their subscription to an app that is 1/10 without buying their subscription. It’s a grotesque way to market a product especially something that deals with something as serious as life and death. I could be driving home 3 or 4 miles away, only to not be notified that on my way home I could find myself in a dangerous situation because I wasn’t within the absolutely absurdly tiny radius of 2.5 miles. This app is disgusting.
This app is steadily getting worse. Every time you use the app, your asked to subscribe and pay. Lots of features locked behind paywall, basically you get notifications of a crime up to 30 minutes or more later. They consistently show crimes in other parts of the city and suburbs nowhere near my location. Then i constantly see reports of gunshots really close within earshot and windows open but nothing heard outside, lots of false reports. They constantly let you know that there is a person convicted of sexual assault living nearby but refuse to show where without payment. They constantly let you know you need to pay for a feature to get any info. Any actual crime or fire in progress gets you only like 5 seconds of dispatch recordings before they tell you to pay to hear more. Pay, Pay, Pay Pay!!!!! Also the comment section is nothing but vile and cruel comments. Constant racism and gang banging by people in the comment sections. Gang bangers gloating in the comment section with no repercussions. This app give you no incentive to upgrade to a subscription
Whyyyyyy is there no option to turn off these horribly obnoxious trumpets?? They are SO disruptive I had to silence ALL Citizen notifications. Look, I get it. The Citizen app can be a downer & they want to add positive news, but this is a total UX fail. I have pets, & I’m truly happy when a lost pet is found. But 1) I don’t use this app to feel good. I use it for helpful safety info. 2) Does my phone need a whole ROYAL announcement? Is the Queen here?? It’s not even a standard alert. Why? It’s jarring & obnoxious. And while it’s great that Citizen is being used to help locate lost pets, these aren’t helpful at all if I was never notified that the animal was missing. If I HAD been, fine. But it appears those only go out locally, so the “found” alerts just feel like a self-serving way for Citizen to go, “See?!? We aren’t always doom & gloom!” But, again, I don’t have this app to get the warm fuzzies. I want relevant, important info. I’ve been avoiding turning off the notifications for Citizen entirely, but I’m done. I’ve searched for ways to mute these specifically or change them to normal alerts. It’s too much.
At the beginning Citizen App was my go to place to see any incidents where I need to steer clear from. Very helpful by the way!! Whether I was driving/riding transportation or walking. Citizen App allowed its users to gain free access to know what is happening in their own neighborhood. When otherwise they would not know. All for free!!! Now I understand keeping an app updated may cost $$. Even fixing bugs may cost $$. But if this was the cause why wouldn’t the developers of Citizen App charge from the very beginning when it opened to the public. The information that they receive is from police scanners, which is free!! But now every thing on Citizen App you are harassed with subscription pop ups! You cannot see past incidents with out being bombarded with a subscription pop up. You cannot read nor view live footage without being blocked by a subscription notification. So I question what is the sense of having Citizen App downloaded on my phone if I cannot view anything. Thanks but good luck!
I like the app, but there are several things I find incredibly annoying. First, I just passed an incident but cannot figure out how to post it without video. I don’t want to, nor was I allowed to stand there and record a dozen police cars responding to reports of a home intruder, but I can’t find another way to post it. So the incident isn’t on the app and it doesn’t appear that it’s going to be. Second, I can’t filter out reports by a certain radius. I live in a decent size city, and a report of a house fire or dumpster fire 2.5 miles away from me means absolutely nothing. It’s just annoying. I get constant notifications and now it’s like the boy who cried wolf - I ignore every single one of them because 99% are so far away from me they don’t impact me at all. I’m definitely going to delete the app if they can’t sort that out, because now it’s just interrupting me while I’m at work or enjoying time out without giving me valuable information.
Used to be free. Everything on there is public information that you can get for free, just takes longer to use another site and other sites won’t alert you as far as I know. Their paywall blocks 99% of settings so you’ll get EVERY notification (sometimes the exact same one over multiple days) from coast to coast. It’s like the boy who cried wolf every time I hear it. Stresses me out that something might be happening nearby. They do this on purpose so we'll cave in and pay the $20+ per month. Horrible. I’m a young, fairly attractive woman living in a sketchy area of Denver. I got this app to get timely alerts while I’m out since I walk or take public transportation. I’m security for high profile events as well. This app used to give me some peace of mind. It’d be real nice if they didn’t get greedy and genuinely cared about our safety, because I can’t afford this now. They even block off all the info and blur the photos of newly registered seggs offenders! Citizen app did a total 180° on their morals. Totally disgusting!
This app has progressively gotten worse about sending triggering content in notifications and not censoring things appropriately in posts, to the point where I am deleting it. It didn’t seem to be as big of an issue when I downloaded the app years ago, but it seems like those pushing out the content have forgotten that their subject matter is people. I understand the importance of funneling people away from crime/accident scenes but sending out information about suicides and accidents is an entirely different scenario than an armed criminal on the loose and at times it feels like they all get treated the same. I got this app to be more aware of real time incidents, not to be triggered opening my phone on my lunch break or to see gory footage/photos at all, let alone without warning. The people running this seem to have forgotten that they are humans reporting on human events. I understand having a job that requires needing to dissociate at time to get it done, I have one too, but they need to remember how to flip the switch back to humanity.
I had no issues with this app until yesterday with a new update. I liked looking on the map and zooming in on my area to see what had occurred overnight or when we are heading home from outside the city, I could check which areas seemed to be having a concentration of incidents so I knew which route to take home. Now, the map is partially covered with descriptions of active incidents, which may not even be in my area. I liked being able to click on the incidents I wanted to know more about. Also, it is now only showing active alerts. I cannot zoom in to see past events. I’ve been all through Settings, but have not discovered a way to see past alerts. My city has a lot of crime, so I do have other ways of keeping track of things in my area, but Citizen was a great resource to find out more info (although, when my neighbor was murdered, it never showed up in Citizen). I wish this particular update didn’t happen. Not sure if I’ll be using the app much longer, as it is no longer giving me the info I need.
I use to love this app but now I'm deleting it. Everything is locked behind a pay wall. Once the app got popular they slowly implement it, paying features it started with Citizen Protect which was 5 a month. So, I guess since nobody was paying for that they decided to fully force you to do so if you want to continue to use the app. Things that use to be free to use with the app require a subscription which is 5 a month. Want to watch a video that was posted? Better subscribe. Want to create an alert around your work or home that's a subscription, want to see past events? You guessed it subscription! The app use to be really good and I use to sit on this app for up to 30 mins at a time looking at stuff going on in different states can't do that now subscription! I mean you can go to the other states and see the events but forget seeing any videos. Honestly, the app isn't worth having like it use to be. You do get alerts when there are things going on and you can chat but that's it!🤷🏾♂️
I got this app to see if there were any bad people around me. First of all I had to get the free trail for it. Second it didn’t even show the correct location. I tried googling some of these people and I could only find one with his location last being known in a different area from mine. Most of this stuff is a subscription use only which is very unhelpful because if this was a serious situation I would never be able to find them. I think the app otherwise may be good and I could be wrong about the location thing but I feel like it’s a safety hazard. Just to be specific, I did not use any other features because I did not need them at the moment but I’ve heard from other people in these reviews that it is also subscription based and not helpful at all. I don’t recommend getting this app if you are not willing to pay for the subscriptions.
Citizen used to be good. Now, though, you don’t see any local incidents except what seems like a random selection of a few (<10) throughout the city, and they want you to pay to play. And if they don’t even show you at least a map of incidents and a short description without paying, then how can you trust that anything more would show if you did pay? It will sometimes show an incident happening in another state that has made national news - which I understand, and I do want to see those. But other times it will send a notification for something happening in my state, but a different city, for no apparent reason (just local crime, not something big) - while not alerting on anything happening in my city! You can’t get past much in the app without hitting a paywall, to the point where if you do see something relevant, you can’t see everything because you have to pay. And those sex offender alerts? Yeah, that’s just an ad for a paid feature giving you information that I’m pretty sure you can look up for free somewhere else. The last straw was at 4:30 this morning - there was a swat situation about a mile from my house, an officer was killed, another injured, the suspect and two people inside the house dead. What did Citizen have to say about that? Absolutely. NOTHING. No alert, not so much as a pin on the map. So why have the app at all? Well, I don’t have it anymore because I deleted it.
I’ve relied on this app for the last few years to keep me aware of what’s going on in my area, however it’s really gone downhill. I recently updated the app and I can’t help but think that’s has something to do with it, as now it’s constantly pushing a subscription version. Prior, if anything odd in my area happened I could open up the app to get info and without fail there would be SOMETHING about the incident, even if just to say something general like “police activity”. However, about 45 min ago I was woken up by very clear and present gun shots and still nothing about it has showed up in the app. I would’ve thought I had dreamt the shots, except my partner heard them as well. This is the kind of thing that would've registered in the app immediately, prior to me updating, so I’m very confused why it’s not appearing now. Looking for a new alternative, as I’m not going to pay their ridiculous subscription fee for the same kind of local community driven updates I previously got for free.
Needs to be able to flip to landscape on a tablet, but great tool
I am working and building a GSOC for work, and while we don’t have the other tools set up, this is a great tool for finding out what’s going around near any of our 68 locations I have to track. My only grip, and its something hopefully the devs will consider is that when using this on a tablet with a keyboard to fill out a GSOC report, it does not flip to landscape. This is a massive 12.9 inch iPad Pro with a keyboard it isn’t convenient to have to take it and rotate it to use the app then back to fill out the report. Fix that and you have a great tool. I like having access to things quickly with pictures and videos. Someone said that a parade is not something that should be on here, I disagree it impacts my buildings greatly from coast to coast and I want to know about it and see it. So great app, great tool, make it rotate to landscape please!!!!
Revisited, it’s getting worse. I was hoping it would get better but the problem is as less people use it the less “citizens” report. They need to rethink their business model. You will be bombarded with upsells now when just trying to see the basic stuff. No way to turn that off. If they were smart they could make money off an occasional ad to make revenue, instead they want a pay wall. Fuhgetaboutit. Time to delete. I tried a couple more days to get over the pop ups trying to get me to pay, but it’s too annoying and definitely not worth paying for. Thumbs down 👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽 Again revisited, and now since almost no one is reporting crimes, they post stuff from much farther away to fill in when serious crimes are happening down the street. The whole basis of what made the app work is gone. Someone needs to revisit the way it originally worked and throw in occasional ads to support it. The pay wall model is a complete failure.
Amazing business decision to lock features that were previously available behind a pay wall
You have to be extremely terrible at business to think that it is a good idea to lock features that were available before behind a pay wall. Before I was able to see all of the alerts in my area even alerts from several days ago. Now if I wanna see some thing that happened just two days ago, I have to pay for the "plus" tier. i'm going to be honest with you citizen: no one is going to do this. Absolutely no one. In fact, less people are going to be using your app because now it's totally unfunctional. You click an event that happened only to see that it is locked behind the plus tear basically everything you see on the map is locked behind the plus tear. What's the point in even using this app if you can't see a single thing that has happened. What's the point and using the app? If you can't see anything that has happened. It's useless. And it's being uninstalled.
I would recommend this app for those who desire a basic overall awareness of what is going on in your area the only issue is that it has a useless premium subscription that makes it almost pointless considering a lot of the information could be found on a browser. The idea of needing to pay for our safety is redundant but it does have its uses. I recently discovered how close I lived to a convicted child rapist through this app and can further use it to protect my children. It also keeps me up to date on current events throughout my city but the odd subscription system withholds information if too much time passed and i’m not paying for the app. Outside of the microtransaction the app does offer a quick and easy way to stay in touch with your area for those who are too busy to regularly check the news.
I've been using Citizen for a couple of years now. It used to be great, particularly around the height of the COVID pandemic. However, everything is now behind a paywall. You can't post any incidents or view old ones that happened not even a week ago. It's useless unless you pay the premium. What's the point of an app called "citizen" to be fueled by local "citizens" when really you can't even rely on it unless you pay! I remember being able to easily navigate the app and getting prompt notifications. Now, notifications come "late." "Late" because Citizen notifies you of some really worrying incidents that, after you tap on the notification to take you to the app, turns out to be SO OLD or reported SO LATE that YOU CAN'T EVEN VIEW IT ANYMORE! The real-time notifications are used to lure you into the app to try and get you to... yup. To pay. What a joke this app has become. It's a shame because it's supposed to help the community.
This disappointing August 2022 update now only shows what is current in your immediate area within 24 hours. This is laborious and debilitating. For parents and more, the now removed longer-term incident indicators provided a welcome snapshot of where we were heading, of the area you're traveling through, or to, or where your children are, college areas, and neighborhoods. At a glance, it gave trends and history, and data. Now it tells me nothing but partial data often out of full context for my locale - subject to the time checked. This update has greatly lessened overall safety. It lulls a false sense of security and requires unreasonable time to put together a mental map for the user, as well as search comments and video updates on recent significant area incidents. If this does not change to not only include current information on my specific locale, but also the useful and more broad prior mapped history at a glance, my entire family will be deleting this app.
Why on earth do I have to pay money to see sex offenders?? It's literally free information that I can find on Google easily. The fact that they're putting free information behind a paywall is absolutely ridiculous. There's so much stuff that you have to pay for on this app, and it makes you wonder: does this company actually care for your safety, or do they just want your money? You shouldn't have to pay just to feel safe. Other than the abundance of pay-to-use features, this app is pretty helpful. I like being notified of important events in my area and country. The only other thing I'm not a fan of is the comment section. On every tragedy, there's a bunch of immature kids mocking deaths. I understand it's nice to communicate with others in your community about important information, however the comments get increasingly toxic every time I look at them.
Multiple times the address for the incident is incorrect, or the spelling of street names is off. Right now theres two completely different locations for the same incident, with the same video. Every-time I turn my phone sideways for a video the app doesnt let me turn it back ?¿ Every-time I click go live- on accident- it wants me to enable my microphone, and forces me to settings without an option to exit, so I have exit the app just to go back home. Also moderating has been an issue and there are a lot of racist, discriminatory comments. Its become so frustrating to use with these glitches, the constant bombardment of subscription alerts, and disgusting comments. This was free at first and now they just want you to sign up. Why would I sign up for Pro, when there are already so many simple issues with the layout of the free design? Wouldn’t recommend this to people anymore.
I work at a school. We had a lock down situation in which I didn't know what was happening - just that we were in lock down and could not leave our rooms. The incident happened right after final dismissal and I was alone in my classroom, with the lights out and trying to be absolutely silent. I wanted to report the incident on Citizen but I did not want to show live video or make any sound at all. I thought there would be some way to type an incident report but I couldn't see a way to do that on the app. Fortunately the situation turned out to be less dangerous than it could have been and the whole thing was over within 45 minutes, but it would have been great to submit a report to try to get some information about what was going on from the community. Generally the app is good, and the idea behind it is great, but you can't always shoot video or talk.
I started using this app when I moved to a new city I was not familiar with a few years ago. This app was amazing and really did make me feel safer. There was a period where the app seemed to not be working. I stopped getting notifications of incidents in my area and, when I opened the app, there were no dots indicating any activity. The app appears to be updated now but unfortunately, that update has put all useful information behind a subscription. I wouldn’t mind paying to use this app but it really should be a one-time fee. I’m not paying $40 PER YEAR for this. There isn’t even a free trial option to even see what this “new premium” gets you. And,if I’m not mistaken, isn’t all of the information being relayed essentially crowd-sourced from other users? So, it’s $40/year to use the platform? I Can get live updates in my city for free on Twitter. I miss the convenience of this app but there are other ways to get the same information.
Citizen REALLY needs to allow users to set a notification radius. For example, I don’t need to be notified about an incident almost 30 miles away from me. I straight up don’t care about it. What I would care about though is everything within about a 1.5 mile radius. But I can’t do that. Because you don’t have that feature it actually carries a few negative impacts for the users. 1. I am complacent, the Citizen app gives me the perception that I am being spammed because I am notified multiple times per day about events that don’t and won’t impact me. 2. I don’t actually know how close something might be until I open the app. Whereas if I had a radius setting and was notified I would know to be alert right away. Potentially saving precious time. 3. Because I am getting notified of things 30 miles away or further, e.g. Washington D.C. Citizen ironically entirely fails to notify me of things within the zone I care about the most. 4. I am honestly getting tired of all these notifications that are ultimately meaningless to the original intent or advertised intent of the app. I have uninstalled the app because I am so tired of the constant spamming. It’s unfortunate because I really like and support the original intent. But if users don’t have control of their radius then it is ultimately useless. Once this is corrected I will gladly reinstall the app. I hope this finds the right hands, Paul Heinrich
This app used to be good. People would post crimes, police activity, missing pets, gunshots etc. But now it’s a complete dead zone. I live in a really populated city and I’ll see that the most recent posts are from 4 days to 2 weeks old. The reason ? Most likely because you have to pay to do practically anything on there. You have to pay to change your location? That doesn’t make any sense. You have to pay to see recent sexual offenders in your own neighborhood! That’s so stupid and immoral. On top of that it shows you recent activity from completely different states. Why would I care what’s going on in a neighborhood in Chicago if I live on the complete opposite side of the U.S? I have to pay to update my location but can see activity from a location almost 900mi away. This app should just be wiped or remade or updated to where the paywall isn’t so intense. I get it , you need to make money but is the way you’re doing it working? No.
I was restricted for violating their rules. They never told me. Not an email not a message nothing. I hadn’t been able to post a comment so I emailed their support team & did not receive a reply. 10 days later I sent another email. Again no reply however when I tried to post a comment this time as a test, a message popped up saying your blocked. No explanation no opportunity to contest it nothing. I see vile vile comments on this app all the time which is what I finally had enough of & responded to. Normally I don’t engage but when you see these constant disgusting things you break. Thinking about it afterwards I realized most are probably bots which is another thing citizens app doesn’t not control. Yet these people still continue to post the most sick things. I canceled my subscription. In my city police radios will no longer be accessible to the public very soon anyway so it will be just occasional posts from the public.
Had this app a couple of years. It was funish. Could see somewhat how many car accidents were around me. Usually you could tell what police or fire activity was going on. Once it notified me of my apartment dumpster on fire. Not really useful but decent info to know. Now the notifications are mostly gone and everything you press brings up a subscription notice. If you are not paying for this app, you can't really get access to much of anything. And there is zero reason to pay for a twentieth the notices that it had before. Some alerts are free, but many alerts require a paid subscription to even see what the incident is. On the incidents which are free, if you listen or watch any of the videos some stop midway and tell you that you cannot finish the recording unless you upgrade your subscription. I get being paid for work, but this app requires a wide base of people reporting or professional access to systems they don’t have. I’m done
The most powerful safety app for today’s world. Download Citizen to feel safer at home or out. Get real-time safety alerts and live video of incidents happening near you, updates on natural disasters or protests, and know if your loved ones are near a dangerous incident. Plus, 24/7 access to a trained Protect Agent who can help whenever you feel unsafe. Citizen notifications have urged people to evacuate burning buildings, deterred school buses from nearby terrorist attacks and have even led to a rescue of a 1-year-old from a stolen car. Citizen may notify you of a crime in progress before the police have responded. It's meant to protect you and your community — please use it responsibly. NEW! 24/7 access to a trained Protect Agent who can discreetly help, silently monitor your live location and audio, alert other users, call 911, monitor heart rate through your apple watch and more. No situation too big or small. See friends on your Safety Map: Know their safety status at a glance and find out if (and when) they are near a dangerous incident in real-time. You can turn on Ghost Mode to keep your location private at any time. Real-time Safety Alerts: Location-based notifications help you avoid potentially dangerous situations. Live Breaking Video: Watch live video of an incident unfold from different angles or broadcast live from the scene. Keep Your Community Safe: Report incidents right when they happen to protect the people around you In case of emergencies, Citizen also offers the Protect subscription to help protect you and your loved ones. You can read the Terms of Use here: https://citizen.com/privacy/protect-supplemental-tos
