In the works: Downtown Davis Watch

A private safety network for downtown Davis businesses, built in a few days with AI. One map, six one-tap buttons, Davis PD data refreshed every hour. Demonstrated to the police department and the downtown association.

The block looks after the block. That is the whole idea behind Downtown Davis Watch, a private safety network for downtown Davis businesses that I built this fall and have been demonstrating to the people who would use it: downtown owners, the Davis Downtown Business Association and the Davis Police Department.

What it does

Members sign in with a phone number and a PIN. No app store, nothing to download: it runs on your phone like an app. Everything downtown sits on one map: member businesses, the green cones that show what each member camera can see, orange dots for Davis PD calls from the past week and red dots for arrests, straight from the police department's public data and refreshed every hour.

Six one-tap buttons do the work. Heads up warns the shops within two blocks in seconds when something is happening right now. Who's got footage asks the neighbors with a camera pointed the right way. Needs cleanup, Ask outreach and Call PD route the rest, and My cameras keeps each owner in control of what they share.

Built to be fair

The house rules show every time the app opens. Names and ethnicity stay in a private box that only the reporting member, the app custodian and the police report ever see. Photos are blurred for members and the original is kept for the police. Places, cameras and incidents only. Never a list of people. No audio. No facial recognition.

Why it matters

The downtown association had vetted a program that would cost about $40,000 a year. I built this one in days with AI, on infrastructure that costs almost nothing to run, and the first question I got from the people I showed it to was "you did this in six hours?" That is what AI changes: a city-sized tool is now something a neighbor can build for his neighbors.

Downtown Davis Watch is in pilot with sample data while the details are worked out with the city. If you run a downtown business and want in, tell me.