Fairfield police join real-time crime safety app
The agency is now a law enforcement partner for Amazon's "Neighbors app by Ring," a way for individuals to share crime and safety tips.
The Fairfield Police Department on Wednesday sad it had forged a new partnership with an Amazon subsidiary to participate in a real-time public safety app that is popular with suburban residents.
Neighbors is a free application distributed by Ring, the consumer surveillance subsidiary of technology and retail giant Amazon. The app allows Ring customers and others to share real-time public safety and crime tips with other subscribers.
In recent years, Amazon has opened both its Ring and Neighbors platform to law enforcement partners, allowing police departments and other public safety agencies to push information to the public and accumuluate non-private user data like surveillance video from Ring devices that customers have chosen to make publicly available. The program, called the Neighbors Public Safety Service, is offered to verified public safety agencies free of charge.
The move has drawn criticism from civil liberties groups and tech columnists who say Neighbors and similar platforms allow users to spy on the ordinary activities of their neighbors and make dubious claims about suspected criminal activity. One columnist described the Neighbors app at “terribly addictive” in that it provided a “wildly engaging hodgepodge of voyeurism, suspicion, unease and mystery.”
Some have argued that Amazon’s marketing strategy for Ring has made their hardware devices — almost all of which have real-time digital cameras — appear to play a crucial role in public safety when they actually do very little to help law enforcement solve and prevent real crimes.
But Amazon says Ring devices and the Neighbors service have the potential to play critical roles in solving open investigations. Through the public safety partnership, Amazon says police can directly ask Ring customers for surveillance video when they are investigating crimes in their areas.
Disclosure of surveillance video and other materials is voluntary, Amazon says, and customer information isn’t shared with law enforcement without their consent or a valid court order.
On Tuesday, Fairfield’s police department joined hundreds of others across the country in partnering with Amazon for their Neighbors by Ring service.
“Anyone with a smartphone can download the free Neighbors app and use it to share images, videos and information about crime and safety related incidents in real-time,” the agency said in a statement. “The Fairfield Police Department can now join the conversation and use information shared to aid investigators in identifying suspects and directing patrols to necessary areas in order to deter crimes.”
The agency said residents can join Neighbors by Ring through the company’s website or by texting the words “Join Today” to shortcode 555888.
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