Columbus City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to enter an agreement with the company Ring Doorbell that will allow police and firefighters to access video from residents’ Ring systems with the residents’ permission.
The program — called the Neighbors for Public Safety Program — is free for police and fire departments to join. The idea is that if a crime or suspected crime occurs in a particular area of the city, investigators can view surveillance footage from doorbell cameras in the area.
Ring Doorbells is a national company owned by Amazon that produces doorbells that record video of activity on residential property and send the video to the homeowners’ phones. The Neighbors for Public Safety program allows investigators to request video from a particular time and place from Ring. Ring will then contact residents in the area and ask for permission to send the videos.
City Public Information Officer Joe Dillon stressed to council members that participation in the program is completely voluntary for residents.
“The customers have one of three choices,” Dillon said. “They can say ‘Yes, you have my permission to view my video,’ they can say, ‘No, you don’t’ have my permission,’ and then they can also say, ‘Leave me alone and don’t ever contact me again.’”
Ring reports a 97 percent participation rate from residents whose local departments request video surveillance.
“People want to be good neighbors and if they accept the invitation, no one ever comes to your house,” Dillon said. “It’s all downloaded from the cloud. They’re only looking (for video) for a specific time.”
Investigators will receive the videos without ever learning the residents’ names, Police Chief Fred Shelton said. Both he and CFR Chief Martin Andrews said the program would be beneficial to local investigators, with Andrews specifying firefighters would use it in arson investigations.
City officials also plan to promote the phone application called Neighbors, which would allow residents who have doorbell cameras not produced by Ring to upload video from a certain time to app, giving police access to the videos.
While Ring and similar doorbell cameras have become increasingly popular in the last few years, Shelton said he does not know how common they are in Columbus. However, law enforcement departments in other cities, including Oxford and Biloxi, currently use the program.
Shelton told The Dispatch after the meeting that investigators will begin training how to use the program next week. It will cut down on investigators having to go door to door to ask residents what they saw and any kind of suspect or vehicle description.
“Say we’re looking for a certain vehicle in the area at a certain time,” he said. “… Well, if we can check the system, this will show it going from Point A to Point B to C, D, E, we can (put together a timeline). That’ll be awesome.
“It’s just another tool,” he added. “Some more eyes and ears out there.”
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