A disobedient electronic for the MTA

On October 25th 2019, a group of NYPD officers claimed witnesses spotted 19-year-old Adrien Napier carrying a gun outside near the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. After a brief chase, the officers spotted Napier sitting on a subway train at Jay Street Metrotech (the closest train stop to ITP's campus). After a hostile arrest that involved over 10 police officers pointing guns at the teenager, no weapon was found. However, Napier was still arrested for fare evasion. This incident has spurred months of anti-MTA, anti-NYPD protests, demonstrations and even vandalism rooted in anger with the targeting and mass incarceration of minority youths. People are demanding criminal justice reform.

Pippa and I, both born and raised in the city of New York wanted to find a way to leverage technology and data to help those who fear the NYPD. What we came up with us a community-participation tool that would help alert individuals when police officers are present in subway stations. In order to do this, we want to repurpose the iconic light globes outside of subway stations. When the lights are colored NYPD blue, people can be alerted and know that cops are in the subway station.

The globes leverage twitter’s API to allow users to color the lights using specific hashtags (i.e. #NYPDmetrotech or #NYPDcanalstreet).
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Github Code: https://github.com/juliantisomathews/Blue-Light/tree/master

Tracking police officers and their locations is a contentious topic that is debatably legal. GPS application Waze does it but there are very few APIs that do it. Also, repurposing city property.