According to Kostmayer, the gift was made possible because the phones had outlived their original purpose: to assist New York City cab drivers report crime or suspicious activity. While the special phones were originally stockpiled for this use, Cab Watch—the world’s largest neighborhood watch—now operates successfully without them.

Today most taxi drivers have their own cell phones, which was not the case when Cab Watch launched 10 years ago. Over the life of the program, the initiative has distributed 7,000 “911-Only” cell phones to cabbies.

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