Originally published at: Remember Cell 411? You can help bring it back to life. | Free Keene
If you’re an old-school Cop Block supporter, you surely remember Cell 411. It was a killer app that allowed the user to send GPS-based emergency alerts out to friends and family and also allowed for live streaming video from the scene, among other useful features for police accountability activists.
For instance, a Cop Blocker could be getting pulled over, send an alert to a “cell” including other Cop Blockers in the area, and then others would know the sender’s location and what was happening, and could mobilize to the scene to provide support. Meanwhile, the Cop Blocker who sent the alert could also stream live video from the pullover that his cohorts could watch while they were en route.
The app also had alerts for other categories such as fire, medical emergency, breakdown, and others. The idea being that when something bad is happening in your life, it’s better to have friends respond instead of armed psychopaths who might shoot you, your family, or your dog. In case you’re not already familiar with Cell 411, here’s a video that Cop Block’s co-founder Pete Eyre made showing the app’s various features several years ago:
Unfortunately, after years of useful service, Cell 411 fell into disrepair due to its founder falling on hard times due to some family difficulties. He reached out to me and the Shire Free Church took over the project in 2020, but by that time the software was essentially broken.
The first thing I wanted to do was open source Cell 411’s programming, which we have done. The project’s new head programmer, “Nobody”, is an old-school Cop Blocker and has spent the last few years – minus six months in jail when he was targeted by the feds for selling bitcoin – trying to refactor and improve the code. However, he needs help. It’s more than a one-man project and he’s getting burned out and needs some people with programming experience for Android and iOS who are willing to help make Cell 411 great again.
If you don’t know how to program, you can still help us test the app.
If you’re willing to help, please join our Matrix or Telegram support chats to get connected, and introduce yourself. You can also find our code at our Gitlab here.
Please share this story if you value Cell 411. Thank you.