An app that intends to bring about more police accountability hit Android and iPhone markets on Monday.
Three teen siblings from Georgia developed the app, called Five-O, after several national cases of what they stated was police brutality occurred, The Root reported.
Caleb Christian, 14, was worried about a number of cases of police violence in the news and decided to work on Five-O with the help of his sisters. Together, the three gathered information about police ratings in each corner of the country.
Five-O allows citizens to enter the details of every interaction they have with a police officer. It also lets them rate the officer in terms of courtesy and professionalism, and provides the ability to enter a short description of what happened. Residents' race and age information data is also captured, according to the sibling's company Pinetart Inc.
"We'd like to know which regions in the U.S. provide horrible law enforcement services as well as highlight the agencies that are highly rated by their citizens. In addition to putting more power into the hands of citizens when interacting with law enforcement, we believe that highly rated police departments should be used as models for those that fail at providing quality law enforcement services", said co-founder and Parkview High School senior Ima Christian on the company website.
The young trio started learning to code as elementary and middle school students when they were exposed to MIT's k12 Scratch and App Inventor programs. Their parents then encouraged them to learn JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
Co-founder and high school sophomore Asha Christian said she expects parents will want the app for themselves and for their kids. The Pinetart team has two more apps in the making and encourages users to like their Twitter and Facebook pages to receive prelaunch versions for testing and review, according to the Pinetart website.
