Streetwise Safety AI, Straight Outta LA

Community safety

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Los Angeles faces a growing crisis of preventable harm in public spaces, especially for vulnerable communities. Various forms of harassment, hate speech, lewd acts, and other unsafe situations are widespread, yet rarely tracked unless they escalate into crimes. Most platforms only capture criminal reports, missing the everyday threats that shape how people move, where they go, and whether they feel safe. These blind spots make people feel isolated and unprotected, and cities unprepared. As LA prepares to host the Olympics, World Cup, and Super Bowl, the gap between lived experiences and official data could put millions at risk. We need to address safety in real time, before harm occurs, not after. By enabling residents to report what they experience and combining it with public data streams, we can build a predictive safety infrastructure that works for everyone, every day, not just during a crisis.

This grant will make MySideKick’s SafetyPin feature available to every LA County resident, allowing people to report and view real-time hazards like street harassment, hate speech, lewd acts, and other unsafe behavior that often goes untracked by traditional systems. These community-sourced reports will be layered with 30+ public and open-source data streams to build real-time, AI-powered predictive threat models.
Residents will also gain access to their own personalized AI safety agent—technology that learns from each user’s behavior and environment, detects risk signals and acts autonomously to help prevent harm. These agents communicate with larger orchestration systems to coordinate broader safety responses at the neighborhood and county levels.
This initiative provides daily utility for LA residents while strengthening LA’s readiness for the 2028 Olympics, World Cup, and Super Bowl. Unlike legacy safety platforms that rely on emergency calls or one-size-fits-all panic buttons, MySideKick is proactive, intelligent, and community-informed. It’s designed to work silently in the background until needed, making safety more accessible, responsive, and predictive for all Los Angelenos—whether they’re out with friends, navigating unfamiliar areas, or attending the world’s biggest events.

Success means every resident and visitor of Los Angeles feels like someone has their back, whether they’re walking alone at night, riding the Metro, or attending a packed event. In the short term, we’ll see thousands using MySideKick to protect one another in real time, while personalized AI agents quietly prevent harm before it happens. City leaders and institutions will begin tapping into this live safety data to respond faster and smarter.
In the long term, LA becomes the global blueprint for proactive safety, where public spaces are trusted, threats are predicted, and lives are protected before headlines are made. As the city prepares to host the 2028 Olympics, World Cup, and Super Bowl, MySideKick will help ensure these historic events aren’t just celebrated, but safe. We’ll prove what’s possible when communities and technology work together to stop harm before it starts.