It’s 2:00 in the morning and your car won’t start. Not on a country road with a howling coyote… but in one of those Detroit neighborhoods where the bankrupted government took out the street lights! So it’s dark.
You call a tow truck and dispatch tells you it will be about 20 minutes. No problem, you just start G chatting with a friend to kill the time. The screen of your android lights up your pretty face. A gang of hooligans passing through take notice; you are alone, you are not from around here. They knock on your window which startles you and raises a scream.
“Open up, Bitch!” says one.
“We just want to party” says another.
You don’t want to party. You hit the “V” button on your android. Then you hit the “confirm crisis” button. A message is sent out to all of your allies on the Voluntero network " and also to every Voluntero member who is on duty within this geographical area. Simultaneously the Voluntero app dials the police.
The 911 operator answers. As the crowd jeers and rocks your car, you tell the operator where you are, and that “Yes, you fear for your life!” …and she says “Someone will be there in 40 minutes.”
Your window is smashed. “… bla bla budget cuts… bla bla sorry..” mumbles the operator from your smart phone that is now on the floor.
The goons are in your car; pinning you down, pulling off your clothes…
Then a truck pulls up " high beams light the scene… and BOOM " you hear gunfire…. again, BOOM.
The would be rapists run away.
The vigilante shines a flashlight on your face " “Pull up your pants, Miss”.
You do it, sobbing, embarrassed, but alive.
“I just shot into the air to scare them off,” he says.
“How did you get here so fast?” you ask.
“The V shines everywhere, Miss.”
Another car pulls up. A younger man with with a camera and a woman with a crowbar jump out and come to you.
“They are dispersed,” said the first responder.
“Good job, Jackson” said the man with the Camera " he pans left and finds the fleeing thugs in the beam of his headlights and films.
The woman drops her crowbar at your feet, then hugs you. Then she had to ask, “Did they…”
“No,” you answered. “They didn’t. They didn’t get the chance.”
This was a dramatization of how the Voluntero application could potentially be used. We are not advocating vigilantism. But we know that governments are bankrupted and police budgets will continue to dwindle. As the saying goes, when seconds count, the police will be there in minutes. Voluntero is about crowd sourcing heroics. You don’t have to wield a shotgun to participate. You don’t even have to swing a fist. Sometimes it only takes a camera, or a set of high beams, or a shout to make the cockroaches scatter and civilization to shine through.
To help us build the Voluntero application use join the team here.
https://teambox.com/projects/voluntero
Or contribute to the code here.
