Hopefully, people stop profiting off this information in the first place. A for-profit company is possibly the worst arbiter of criminal information, as-evidenced by their CEO putting out warrants for homeless people. They simply can't side-step due process like that.
If you need a subscription service to stop yourself from being a victim in a mall shooting, maybe we should reflect on how that effects the greater population.
I dont have a problem with a for profit solution based on anecdotal evidence. You could level the same criticism at anything. What the CEO did wasn't good, but there are tons of examples of public servants, news outlets, and even non-profits grandstanding and fearmongering too.
The ideal application would strip away the BS and just provide data access. I dont care if it is non-profit or for profit.
What I really don't agree with is the sentiment expressed in this thread and others that individuals shouldn't have access to this data because they are too fragile or stupid to handle reality.
It's not "reality" though. As you said, it's entirely based on anecdotal evidence, which leads to things like the CEO making false accusations.
There might be a version of this system that works, but currently Citizen is not it. I suspect that nobody will be able to get it right until they remove the money and focus on credible reporting.
The meat of the data is police scanner dispatches and individual photography.
These are "real" unless you think they a faking police calls and doctoring images.
User posts should be given the same credibility as a stranger on facebook or twitter. Even user posts are "real", unless you think they are psyops/bots.
You should understand that just because someone calls 911 and reports a crime, that doesn't mean a crime has actually been committed.
There are many many many instances of assholes and busybodies calling 911 to report a crime when the reality was that they were irrationally upset a black person was in the park. We have videos of these exact people pulling guns on someone with no justification.
If you need a subscription service to stop yourself from being a victim in a mall shooting, maybe we should reflect on how that effects the greater population.