Downtown Resident Builds App that Pairs Walking Buddies for Safety
A Lower Manhattan resident who was the victim of a street crime is taking matters into her own hands by creating an app that will connect people walking in the same neighborhoods, so they can feel safer.
Pamela Garber, a psychotherapist who lives in Battery Park City, says, “for years, walking from home to my office was like a free, off-off Broadway show. But that started to change in 2019, when the streets stopped being a comedy and slowly morphed into something like a tragedy. I no longer felt safe.”
This perception crystalized in the spring of 2020, when Ms. Garber was assaulted on a Saturday afternoon as she walked to meet friends at a tavern on the Upper East Side. “It was a beautiful day. I noticed a lady out of the corner of my eye,” she recalls. “The words ‘live wire’ went through my mind. So I walked out into the street to avoid her, and sped up. I thought this put some distance between us. But it turned out that she was following me, and when I glanced over my shoulder to check on how far apart we were, she was just a few inches behind me. She began punching me in the side of the head, while screaming, ‘You’re next! You’re next!’ Everything slowed down. It took me a weirdly long time to understand that she wasn’t going to stop, and then to realize that it was up to me to get away.”
“I ran into a nearby store,” Ms. Garber says, “and was joined a few minutes later by another woman who had been assaulted by the same emotionally disturbed person. The police showed up, and they were very professional and compassionate, but they declined to arrest the woman who had attacked us both, even though she was still outside.”
“I believe in our police, but I also believe in individual empowerment,” she says, “and I wanted to make safety in numbers more viable, more available, and more immediate. But I realized that there is no easy way to connect with other people who are walking near where you are, when you are. And even if there were, you might not be comfortable with these people, unless you knew them. But these are the kinds of problem that technology helps to solve all the time.”
“I sat down with a sketch pad, and began storyboarding images of a phone app that would help with this,” she says. “Then I began working on a business plan, asking myself questions like, ‘who will the customer be, where are they, how do I reach them, and what is the budget to get this up and running?’”
Two patents and two trademarks later, she is preparing to launch NeverWalkAlone, an app that connects people who want or need to travel by foot through local streets. It will launch in two versions: one for groups, like businesses, churches, schools, and clubs, in which the members mostly know each other and are brought together by the organization. The second version will be tailored to individuals. “The subscribers to the second version will be vetted by a background check,” Ms. Garber says, “so they can be assured about safety, even with a stranger. It works like a ride share: you put in your location and destination and the time. You can request an immediate connection or schedule for the future. Once you input this information, then your vetted contacts appear onscreen.”
For both versions, people being paired for walks will be directed to meet at public location, rather than a private space. “We want to follow the Citibike model,” Ms. Garber says, “and form a three-way partnership between the app, a corporate sponsor, and local government. Like Citibike, this is hyper-local, but also scalable. Once the app is up and running, we can roll it out to more communities around New York, and then to other cities around the nation.” A fourth component of the confederation Ms. Garber envisions will be investors, whom she has begun to recruit.
“Yes, this is about public safety,” she says, “but the assumption that it appeals mostly to women is probably only half the story – men are the victims of unprovoked attacks almost as much as women. And it’s also about a lot more that safety: there’s a fitness and lifestyle component, and a social-capital aspect, in terms of making our streets livable and inviting, as well as safe. But doing that requires boots on the ground, or sneakers on the ground.”
“I believe that safety and freedom of movement are basic human rights,” Ms. Garber says. “Having a civilization is based on our ability to trust each other.”