Memeza Shout Community Safety Alarms - Observatory of Public Sector Innovation

Launch of the project where alarms were installed and ceremoniously handed over to the police

The Memeza Home Community Alarm is a cost-effective public alarm system designed for low-income communities, that leverages advanced communication technologies for rapid response to incidents. It aims to bridge the gap between communities vulnerable to crime, and the police services that serve them.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

The police came to the CPSI in 2012 with a challenge: to reduce crimes committed in informal settlements. These crimes are reported more than 40 hours later because the victims’ cell phones are stolen when the crimes are committed. When the police arrive at the crime scene 40 hours later, the crime scene is polluted. Police find it hard to locate the crime scene because informal settlements do not have proper street addresses. In short, the police wanted a solution that will assist them to respond to crime incidences immediately and shorten their response time.
The Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI) approached The Innovation Hub to use Open IX, which is an open innovation facility. There, we developed a challenge, which we posted for the community of innovators to respond. The community responded through various conceptual proposals. Through this process we selected an innovator, who was herself was a victim of crime. Together with the police and the innovator, we co-developed the solution, with all parties providing input. The Innovation Hub’s purpose is the incubation of small businesses, and so it funded the development of the solution. The CPSI, with private sector partners, funded the piloting of the solution in an area called Diepsloot.
The resulting solution was the Memeza Community Safety Alarm System. It is a holistic, community-based alarm system. It is the first public alarm system that is directly integrated with the police, Community Policing Forum and community structures. It was designed to ensure that it is affordable enough to allow lower-income individuals to link their alarms to the police.
The system was developed specifically for collaboration with the police, taking into account police regulations and challenges. It improves frontline service delivery to communities, with police now being able to track service levels with validated data. It enables communities to notify the police of crime immediately, therefore allowing police to proactively respond and catch criminals. Through the system, the police are able to track and measure their own frontline delivery services with a “on scene” police functionality, which allows the measuring of response times.
Pressing the panic button produces a unique three-phase siren sound (designed at the request of Business Against Crime) to alert the neighbourhood and Street Patrollers, flashes a red light to make easy identification of the house in distress, and sends out alert SMS messages to the cell phones of the local Sector Police, Street Watches, Patrollers as well as pre-selected family, neighbours and friends. There is no limit to the number of respondents to be notified.
The SMS includes street address or landmark of the house where the alarm has been activated. The activated alarm (a deafening sound and bright red flashing light) scares away intruders. It automatically logs all crime statistics to a back end database for up-to-date reporting, audit trail and accountability. The Alarm system communicates with the Back End Management system, ensuring every incident or activity linked with the actual unit, or customer is captured and stored. The back end system provides access to real time, validated crime intelligence, linked to the individual impacted, geographical area and data related to the crime.
The Home Community Alarm bridges the gap between the household under attack by criminals/intruders and the Sector Policing by alerting the neighbours, street patrollers and Sector Police through sound and cell phone alert messages, and at the same time disable and scare away the criminals. The beneficiaries of the innovation are vulnerable communities. For the pilot, the police allocated alarms to the homes that had experienced repeated break-ins, minor-headed households and female-headed households.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

In South Africa, home alarms are only offered by private security companies, costing an average $50 monthly subscription fee that poor communities cannot afford. Furthermore, these private services are not linked to the police stations. When citizens dial 10111 to call the police, the police call centre may struggle to locate where they are. Under distress, citizens may find it hard to communicate to the police properly, and occasionally their calls are simply not picked up.
The Memeza Community Safety Alarm is an affordable alternative. The alarm and the monthly sim card subscription, which ordinarily costs $6, is provided for free to pilot communities through funding the network company Vodacom. This solution offers a different means of communication with a direct line to the nearest police station. It provides a policing model that has not been seen in South Africa. It is an example of government co-creating with the community to resolve service delivery.

What is the current status of your innovation?

We have piloted the solution in an informal settlement called Diespsloot and completed the pilot. However, we wanted to see if the solution will work in a different setting/sector, as a result we secured Belgian donor funding for a project where we deploy the solution in schools that were fitted with expensive ICT equipment in Gauteng. The project started in October 2016 and ended in December 2017. We are using the same model where we deploy alarms in schools that are linked to the closest police station, community policing forum in the area and neighbours to the school. We selected 23 schools for the project, and so far there has not been any break-in into these schools since we installed the alarms. We have reached this Diffusing Stage in the innovation cycle through taking lessons from the Diepsloot pilot project. One of the lessons is the realisation that policing in our context will not be effective without the involvement of the communities, a key project success element.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

The partnership was mainly between the Police who were owners of the challenge, the CPSI who linked the Police to the social innovator, the Innovation Hub who incubated the development of the solution and private partners (Vodacom and National Lottery) who funded the pilot. The key partners were the community leaders and Community Policing Forum leaders who ensured that the community bought into the idea.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The project planning meetings involved all the stakeholders including the community and CPF members. This ensured that advocacy work for the project was done by the community and CPF members, which furthered community buy-in.
Police working with community ensured a full-rounded approach to fighting crime. It gave space for self-policing of communities, which reduces the police workload. This innovation empowered and mobilized the communities, and create cohesion between Community, CPF and police

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

After the 6-month pilot, the Diepsloot police station conducted an impact assessment. The results indicated a 100% crime prevention rate in houses with the alarms. There was a significant migration in the crime hotspots. There was also a 60% reduction in serious crimes and a 7-minute police response time in the dedicated pilot area. National Crime Statistics indicate that Diepsloot was the only township in Gauteng with a 9% decrease in murder rate and 26% reduction in sexual violence offences (while attempted murder increased by 16.5%.)
In addition to this, the Station Commander in Diepsloot is now able to observe how the police are responding to crime incidents and at what speed, which is now a useful management.
One major policy objective was increasing the community actively involved in policing, and this pilot enabled the sector police to work with the community and assist the police in fighting crime.

Challenges and Failures

Government procurement system in South Africa is not favourable to funding such experiments. Through anMOU, the CPSI sent money to The Innovation Hub which is allowed to fund start-ups.
With the high unemployment rate in the pilot area, community leaders wanted to influence who was employed as installers. Ultimately, those that had installation experience got the jobs.
Installers did not have smart phones/tablets to capture customer data on the back end system during installations; they had to be loaned.
There were changes in CPF leadership, which occurred during the pilot implementation.
There were false alarms, especially during the early period after the alarms were installed. We had to educate users about importance of false/real emergencies.
There was also SMS and data cost challenges. The pilot sponsor, Vodacom, only paid for 6 – 12 months which ended in January 2016.

Conditions for Success

An incubation facility is quite important to give the space and support to the innovator to develop their ideas. Acceptance by the community is also important.
Also, the police need to be responsive to crime incidences – otherwise, the innovation will not be effective. Any attempts to replicate this solution should therefore start with engagements with the police so that they take ownership of the solution. This also applies regarding community involvement.

Replication

In 2017, we expanded the project, to see if the alarms could protect ICT equipment in schools. The Gauteng Provincial Department of Education had invested in ICT equipment as part of move towards paperless education, but this was challenged by the fact that the equipment was being stolen by criminals.

Our objectives were not only to alert the police when there are attempts to steal the equipment, but also to galvanise the community into protecting their schools. We therefore installed the alarms in 23 schools that had previously experienced theft of ICT equipment.

After installations, we monitored the schools for a year and reported that there were no burglaries in any of the schools where we installed the alarms. The alarms acted as a deterrent and protect the expensive ICT equipment.

Lessons Learned

One major lesson that has been learnt from this pilot is the advantage of starting a small local before going to scale. We initially installed 40 alarms, which allowed project implementers to identify shortcomings and challenges in the system. This would have been difficult if 600 alarms were installed all at once. For example, it was realised that the siren (installed outside the household) was not loud enough. As a result the manufacture was informed which resulted in a better sounding siren for the 560 alarms that were part of the second phase of the pilot. Communication with the community on how alarm recipients were selected, and why there were not more members of the community that could be included had to be carefully managed. Working with community leaders and CPF assisted in communicating to the community, however, some community members were still unhappy with not being included in the project.

Lastly, the ability to innovate around government procurement helps create an environment that is more conducive towards embracing change in the public sector.