Never Walk Alone App to make New Yorkers feel safe: 'It could work'

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, N.Y. (PIX11) -- A Manhattan woman has an idea to make the streets of New York City safer.

She was the victim of a violent attack. Now she wants to make sure no one else feels unsafe the way she did.

Midtown Manhattan psychotherapist Pamela Garber loves walking the streets of New York City. And even before she was a victim of a random violent assault, this Battery Park City resident was trying to develop an app called Never Walk Alone, similar to a buddy system.

“It works similarly to a rideshare when you type in your location and your destination, and your contacts come up, and they are other vetted users of the app,” Garber told PIX11 News.

Garber has created a demo video for her app, which even mentions the assault that took place last June.

She says, in broad daylight, a seemingly homeless woman attacked her on the Upper East Side. “I turned around and she punched me multiple times on the side of the head,“ Garber told PIX11 News. “While I was waiting for the police, another woman came in, and she was pregnant. She had been assaulted, and police did not go and arrest this woman.”

Garber is looking for investors to make her app idea a reality.

She also hopes to meet with members of Mayor Adams' administration, hoping to propose that the app could be a way to generate revenue for the city through subscribers, advertising, and data mining.

PIX11 asked New Yorkers if they would use an app like this.

"100% especially walking alone very late at night, maybe from the subway if you live far away from the subway,” Kiran Merchant, an Upper East Side resident, told PIX11 News. “For me, it’s a 12 or 13 minute walk from my apartment, so for sure." 

Vincent Vanasco, a Brooklyn resident, agreed. “It sounds like it could work if you’re walking in Bushwick, where I was born; there are some dicey spots.”

Julia Reyna, a Battery Park resident, just wanted to make sure the walking companions are vetted. “If it’s something like Uber that does background checks on who you’d be walking with, it could make sense,” she said.

If using one of the proposals, there would be a monthly $25 fee.