APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The doorbell camera company Ring is working with more than 400 police agencies to reduce crime.
The Appleton Police Department is now one of them.
A video was captured by a doorbell camera device in a Brookfield community Friday around 2 a.m. It shows two people roaming the streets, and then walking up a driveway. One of them tries to open a black SUV. Shortly after that failed attempt, the two hopped right into the car and looked through the vehicle, all while the owners were sleeping.
Videos posted like these are why Appleton Police joined Ring’s “Neighbors” app.
“It’s something that we can use for crime-solving, you know, getting our public involved to say, ‘Did you see something in this area?’” Public information officer at Appleton PD Meghan Cash said.
Similar video helped Manitowoc Police arrest a double murder suspect earlier this year.
Karl Hess, 35, was seen walking through the neighborhood where 51-year-old Richard Miller and his 19-year-old daughter Jocelyn were found dead.
“We can request video from people, so it would just be a generic message that would come from the police department, saying, ‘We had an incident in this area, would you be willing to provide any video, or anything you would have from that area?’” Cash explained.
Cash says the Neighbors app lets people share information anonymously with nearby residents, including the locations of their videos or posts.
“If we do see something, we’re going to get an alert, just like anybody would on their phones, saying something’s been posted, or there’s something we need to be aware of,” she said.
Some downtown Appleton businesses are now on Neighbors too.
“That’s the one thing that our business owners are asking from us is how do we better become aware of what’s happening and quickly,” executive director for Appleton Downtown Inc. Jennifer Stephany said. “This is a system and a program that is going to work for us.”
Stephany says it serves as almost a type of digital “business watch.”
“We encourage everybody to use the system and utilize their business address to be able to get alerts that are happening within the downtown district,” she said.
You don’t need to own a Ring device, or any doorbell-camera to use the Neighbors app.
“Ring allows anybody with any sort of platform, whether its Ring, Nest or any other camera system to be able to upload that information and that video to the app, so you don’t have to be a Ring user in order to use it,” said Cash.
Ring’s partnership with law enforcement began in spring 2018. Since then, many have raised concerns about possible privacy infringements, referring to the partnership as “Big Brother.”
But Cash says users stay in control of the information they share, their privacy is protected and they can’t receive ongoing or live-video access.
“The police department is never going to be asking information that you can’t decline. We don’t know where “neighbors” are, and neighbors are assigned an anonymous number every single time they comment, so we don’t even know where you live when you are commenting on something,” she explained.
Although posting suspicious activity in the app is encouraged, Appleton Police still wants you to formally report any crimes you may suspect.
