November 12, 2024, 05:50 AM
Imagine someone being pulled over by police who is anxious and possibly fearful about what happens next — a reasonable concern considering a nationwide rise in police killings — but they have the chance to instantly video call an attorney or mental health expert on their smartphone who can guide them through the interaction or speak with the officer on their behalf.
This scenario might help protect both police and civilians alike in having more safe and positive outcomes.
And that’s exactly what Georgio Sabino III is going for with a startup app and wraparound platform that he and his budding team have already invested years in developing.
Sabino is the founder of the “GoVia: Highlight a Hero” app, which he describes as a platform that “empowers individuals during police encounters by providing real-time access to attorneys and mental health crisis professionals.”
The app is also designed to allow users to submit “verified, respectful” feedback on police interactions, which is where the “highlight a hero” bit comes in.
“This company is for both parties,” said Sabino, those parties being civilians and police. “If we can slow down the interaction between the two so both are de-escalated, then now we’re having a conversation. It’s fear and tension that creates that threat of life and death.”
But Nafisah Alim, Sabino’s business partner, emphasized that the overarching goal of improving outcomes in civilian and police interactions can’t be overstated. The app is intended to provide a level of support and guidance most individuals would probably not otherwise have access to when interfacing with law enforcement.
Alim brings her perspective as the owner and executive director of People, Places and Dreams, a growing Cleveland-based provider of peer and mental health support and related services for individuals grappling with mental health disorders, substance use disorders, addictions, domestic abuse, sexual violence or other stresses or traumas.
The organization has been helping to develop the app and write training programs that could be utilized by police to improve interactions with the people they serve. It’s also one of GoVia’s few financial supporters so far.
“Not everyone needs a lawyer. Some people might need to have that person tell them how to turn themselves in without it escalating, or how to explain to police that, ‘I’m scared and I have a gun,’ or how to explain, ‘I’m drunk, and I’m nervous,’” Alim said. “Having someone there to help you get through your interaction with an officer safely, that’s the point of the app.”
So there could be several use cases for this app from calling for legal help or mental support in real time as someone is about to interact with an officer to seeking professional guidance on how to approach police if, say, attempting to get out of a violent situation with an abusive partner.
A related purpose is also to craft training programs for public safety forces, including police and EMS, to provide supplemental education and guidance on how to navigate situations with people who may be anxious or grappling with a mental health crisis.
Call to action
Sabino, notably, doesn’t come from the tech world. An alum of Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Art, his background is in art, art education and photography. During most days, he’s likely spending the bulk of his time running GS3 Photography, his personal photography and graphics studio.
Sabino is also an activist, a family man and an African American.
Following the death of Philando Castile — a Black man who was killed by a police officer in 2016 during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota after telling the officer he was armed — Sabino felt a calling to try and prevent similar instances of police hurting innocent people.
With so many factors playing into police shootings, that’s an immensely complicated task. In partnership with Alim, however, Sabino zeroed in on the interactions and how those could be addressed to result in better outcomes.
If an individual happens to have an attorney with them at the time of their stop, the officer would be required to speak with them. Ideally, this might diffuse any tense situations between the officer and civilian that might arise. But this is simply not a common occurrence.
Similarly, a mental health professional might help to ease the worries of someone who is preparing to interact with police, whatever the reason and regardless of whether they are or aren’t in immediate trouble.
And that’s where GoVia comes in.
“GoVia offers privilege and credibility to all people: Black, brown, white, poor, any folks who don’t have the funds to have an attorney for them in their moment of need,” Sabino said. “Imagine if Eric Garner had his phone in his hand and said ‘Hey, GoVia,’ and now an attorney pops up. What if George Floyd had that?”
The business it is attached to, GS3 Innovation, was formed in 2017, and a lot of work has going into it periodically over time since then.
The idea is that an individual registered with the app who is about to have a police interaction could open it and have an immediate connection with an attorney or mental health counselor via some video chat platform like Zoom, Google Duo or Skype. That’s the key feature.
Sabino aspires for this platform to have a host of other features as well.
That rating system, for example, could function similarly to filling out a traditional police report with details about the officer an individual interacted with. This could lead to the development of a bank of reviews—positive or negative—that others could see and that would be included in officer records or provided to civilian review boards.
‘We do need a partner.’
While there are many aspirations with GoVIa, it is very much in its early stages. Prototypes remain in development and trial runs are currently in the works for some small areas first, including the Case Western Reserve University campus.
While building the platform has been a time-consuming endeavor, Sabino has benefitted from several programs and startup accelerators. Those include MIT Solve’s “Reimagine Policing” program, the Startup Law Initiative at Berkeley Law, gBETA, the National Science Foundation’s iCorps, Go Global Silicon Valley, the entrepreneurship program at John Carroll University and JumpStart Inc.’s Small Business Impact Program.
The startup has only raised a small portion of capital to support it so far, including an estimated $30,000 from People, Places and Dreams between startup capital and man hours, according to Alim.
CWRU has provided an additional $6,000 to support the near-future hiring of four interns who will join Sabino’s existing team of five this coming spring, which includes software developers.
Sabino is hopeful he can reach a point where he’s ready to raise some real seed capital in the next year or two. He’s continuing along with some other startup accelerators in the meantime, including gener8tor and the Wells Fargo Equitable Access Boost Camp.
“We see it as a win-win for police to be more safe as well, if they decide to work with us,” Sabino said.
Sabino envisions the app making money through a subscription model that users would pay to be a part of. This might not be individual people, he said, but organizations that might make the platform accessible to others who could use it whenever they might need to. If there’s a fee for individual users, Alim wants that to be around $1.
Another income stream could come from licensing the platform’s educational components to safety forces or possibly partnering with other supporting organizations that can advertise their names.
Besides promoting safety and social justice, Sabino envisions creating jobs for the various people who would be needed to run it, including an on-call staff of attorneys and mental health professionals.
Early next year, Sabino said he’s expecting to participate in some forums with police, unions and medical health groups to discuss the app and its development and to collect feedback for improvements.
While all these efforts are in the works, GoVia is going to need more financial support to make its laudable dream a reality.
“We do need a partner,” Alim said. “We could use some angel investors that want to see something like this in the community.”
“What we have now are ideals and a small financial development,” she added. “What we need are community or business partners who could be our cosponsors, or some businesses that could have some skin in the game of making this app come to fruition and do what it needs to do.”
