Turn vigilante with new app created to help people find wanted criminals
A new app called Facewatch will provide members of the public with photos and CCTV images of unidentified subjects in an effort to help police find wanted individuals. But will it cause more harm than good?
A strange new application for most popular mobile devices called Facewatch aims to help normal people weed out criminals by showing them photos and CCTV images. Users are then encouraged to look through them and contact the police if anyone looks familiar.
There’s nothing particularly ground-breaking about the app, news channels and websites often show photos of wanted people, as do TV programmes like Crimewatch. However, it seems a little creepy that you can enter in your postcode to see a list of (potentially) nearby offenders.
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, who works in the Specialist Crime and Operations department in London, told The Telegraph:
“The general public can support us in this – both by providing us with images – and then helping us to identify those who are responsible for committing crime.
“I would encourage as many people as possible to use the app to view these images and send in information.”
Now we get that there are good intentions behind this application, but we can’t help but think some crazy people will see it as an excuse to go and find potential offenders. Or have we been watching too many super hero movies?!
The app is available from the Blackberry App World and iTunes for free. I’ll be Hit Girl if you be Kick Ass. Deal?
