MENASHA, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – If you live in Menasha and have surveillance cameras, police want to hear from you.
The Menasha Police Department is rolling out a new voluntary program with the hope of making the community more involved in crime prevention. It’s called the community camera program.
“It’s gonna make our jobs easier. It’s gonna keep people safer and potentially save lives,” Community Liaison Officer Dan Hoernke said.
The goal of the database is to make Ring doorbell videos more accessible to police when a crime has occurred.
In previous investigations, the department used a door-to-door method to see who may have had surveillance video. Hoernke said the reason for the change is to increase efficiency.
“It helps speed up the process, especially with individuals that are at-risk or endangered,” he explained. “Instead of doing this canvas searching, we can simply rely on a database, go into our database, find the address, contact information for these individuals.”
Hoernke tells FOX the owners of the cameras will always be asked before their footage is searched through.
“We won’t ask for logins, passwords, anything like that. If we have an incident and we have it documented that there is in fact [a] Ring doorbell at addresses surrounding where this person may have been, we’ll ask for consent to get that video footage from them.”
The decision comes as package thefts across the country have been captured on surveillance video.
Hoernke said Ring doorbells have already been helpful in Menasha for other reasons as well.
“When we have a child or an endangered adult or maybe someone on the autism spectrum that goes missing, they come in very handy.”
Although the Ring brand is most common today, it won’t be exclusively used in the program.
“Anything like that, that’s going to capture camera footage — so, we’re not limiting it to just Ring doorbells,” Hoernke said.
Menasha officer Sam Vassar introduced the idea just weeks ago, so the program is still in its early stages.
Learn more about the program and how you can sign up here.
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