After its first pilot project in an upscale neighborhood of Los Angeles in 2015, Ring said the presence of its cameras had reduced burglaries in the neighborhood by 55% from the previous year, but the figure could not be replicated by independent analysis. Related Storyĭespite the company’s focus on police partnerships, it’s unclear how much the cameras actually help in deterring or solving crimes. Ring’s partnerships with many police forces give the participating departments a “much wider system of surveillance than police legally could build themselves,” as Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the chair of the House Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, wrote in a June 2020 letter to Amazon. Today, more than 1,800 law enforcement agencies across the US use the Neighbors app, along with more than 360 fire departments. Until June 2021, the company also provided a special Neighbors portal that let law enforcement request access to footage from Ring owners, even if they had not posted it publicly. Ring gave free devices to individual officers as well as entire departments from 2016 to January 2020, often in exchange for promoting the cameras and their accompanying social network and app, Neighbors by Ring. Ring has partnered with more than 1,800 law enforcement agencies and 360 fire departments across the United States, providing free doorbell cameras to police officers, fire fighters, and members of the public, usually in exchange for promoting Ring and the Neighbors app.Īs a result of these partnerships, police forces around the country are awash in Ring cameras. The company’s acquisition by Amazon in 2018 has further expanded Ring’s reach, as have its close partnerships with law enforcement agencies. Many consumers are drawn in by Ring’s central marketing pitch: that the cameras can reduce crime by making it easy to keep an eye on people’s front porches, driveways, and-often-passersby. Now Ring has it cornered: in 2020, the company sold an estimated 1.4 million devices globally-as much as the next four competitors combined, according to a report by the business intelligence company Strategy Analytics. When Ring launched eight years ago with a crowdfunding campaign, the market for home surveillance cameras and video doorbells barely existed. The deputies on the scene confiscated the key, and Smith sent them the Ring camera footage, which they used to press charges for burglary and violation of the injunction.

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