In 1964, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was murdered outside her apartment in Queens, New York, while a reported 38 people saw or heard the attack, none of them called the police or tried to help her. This was the incident that inspired the first Neighborhood Watch scheme, a movement that spread across the US in the 1970s, the UK in the 1980s, and still maintains millions of members worldwide. The community-driven crime prevention initiative has become a useful tool for district-level safety for decades but now data-age video surveillance technologies offer a smarter way to watch the neighborhood. Last week provided a big boost for one such technology as Atlanta, Georgia, based public safety-as-a-service company Flock Safety announced a $47 million Series C funding round led by Meritech Capital. The company’s ALPR Camera System scores hours of video footage to identify suspicious activity such as unrecognized vehicles or unusual movements. Both the community itself and the […]