As Caleb Obiagwu watched protests against racism and police brutality engulf the country, he wanted to help protect the Black-owned businesses that found themselves at the center of some of the demonstrations.

Obiagwu, a graduate of Syracuse University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, feared that the looting of businesses that occurred during some protests could damage the livelihoods of Black community members. While Obiagwu doesn’t support the looting of any business, he felt that the looting of Black-owned businesses would be a painful setback in the nationwide fight for equality.

“If a Black business is looted currently, it does not help further this movement, as we will be taking five steps back,” Obiagwu said. “These businesses would end up not being able to reopen.”

So Obiagwu –– alongside friends Brandon Elliott and John-Paul Besong –– launched Safe Loot, a website that catalogues Black-owned businesses in cities across the U.S. The team hopes the database will empower protesters to protect Black-owned businesses from people who may attempt to loot them during demonstrations.

“It’s not protesters that are doing the looting and the rioting. It’s opportunists,” Obiagwu said. “And we want protesters to be able to stand their ground and be able to identify these Black-owned businesses, to know what is going on around them, to help stop it.”

At first glance, the website is simple. Location markers stipple a map of the U.S., clusters of them concentrated in large cities. Each marker represents a Black-owned business, including everything from law firms to restaurants. 

The team aggregates data for the site using software they designed to comb existing registries and retrieve the names of Black-owned businesses. After manually verifying each data point, they add the businesses to the map.

“There are already some online sites that have this data, but they don’t aggregate them properly,” Obiagwu said. “We go in, we mine the data, and then we start cross-checking to make sure (the businesses) are still available before we add to our database.”

Many of the cities Obiagwu’s team initially focused on –– New York City, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Seattle –– have seen large-scale protests against police brutality and racism unfold in recent weeks. But as the protests rapidly expanded to cities across the county, Obiagwu and his team struggled to keep up.

“The day Safe Loot launched, we had 20 cities in, because those were the most prominent that the protests were going on in, and the looting also,” Obiagwu said. “But by the next day, all of the 50 states were protesting.”   

Obiagwu, Elliott and Besong settled on the name Safe Loot for their product in an effort to recontextualize the word “loot,” they said. The team felt that the word had taken on a negative meaning, becoming associated with the outside actors attempting to disrupt an otherwise peaceful movement.

The trio wanted the word to signify the protection and promotion of Black-owned businesses, Elliott said.

“By naming our product Safe Loot, we wanted to essentially take ownership and rebrand the word ‘loot’,” said Elliott, another ECS graduate. “We wanted to put it in a more positive light.”

Obiagwu said his team members all wanted to contribute something to the push for racial justice sweeping across the country. At the same time, they wanted to avoid putting themselves or their families at risk by exposing themselves to the coronavirus. 

Government officials –– including New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo –– have expressed concerns that large protests could further the spread of the virus.

As computer engineers, Obiagwu, Elliott and Besong felt that their tech background provided them with a unique opportunity to support the movement while protecting themselves from infection.

“Having some background in STEM, this sort of seemed like it was our duty and our mission to sort of help the situation,” said Besong, a senior computer engineering major at SU. “There are a lot of other big tech CEOs who aren’t doing anything, so this is sort of our opportunity to help our community.”

The team plans to continue developing Safe Loot, adding more cities and collecting data on more businesses. Users can contribute to their efforts by sending them the names of Black-owned businesses through a reporting tool on the website, Obiagwu said.

For now, Obiagwu hopes Safe Loot will provide vital information to protesters and community members looking to protect Black-owned businesses. Beyond that, he’s not sure what the app’s future will be.

“At its completion, we’re expecting (Safe Loot) to be a destination where people can go to locate Black businesses around them, hopefully support them,” Obiagwu said. “The end goal – we really don’t know.”

Published on July 1, 2020 at 1:32 am

Contact Chris: cjhippen@syr.edu