The popular navigation app Waze includes a feature that rewards users for revealing the location of police officers. A debate over the public safety impacts of that feature is gaining traction, and some police officers want the feature removed.
Fidel Martinez reports on a growing coalition that opposes the use of a feature from one of the darlings of the mobile apps scene—Waze. The feature in questions allows users to report the location of police. Here's how Martinez sums up the viewpoint of the police that support the feature's removal from the app:
"For those who live in a congested city with poor city planning, Waze is a godsend. For police officers, however, the popular app is putting their lives at risk."
As Martinez explains, the movement to remove the feature of the app that allows users to report the location of police officers is led by Sergio Kopelev, "a reserve deputy for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department who spent many years running the cybercrimes unit for the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia."
Koplev is citied in the article, making his case against the Waze feature: "'When you pin an officer’s location, you don’t know who you’re broadcasting that information to,' Kopelev explained. He cited how Ismaaiyl Brinsley had allegedly posted a screengrab of him using Waze to track police movement before killing NYPD officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos."
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