Interviews with 40 police departments in eight states that partnered with Ring for at least three months show there is little evidence that Ring reduces crime
Hundreds of police departments have signed agreements with Ring to gain access to footage filmed on home surveillance cameras
The 40 departments interviewed now have interview-based evidence, not vendor claims, as the basis for judging whether their Ring agreements deliver any crime reduction — awkward for agencies that signed on amid rapid peer adoption.
Ring's core sales pitch to police, that camera-network access deters or solves crime, is directly undercut at the moment the program is recruiting hardest toward its 2,000-department scale.
Second-order effects
Cities weighing new or renewed agreements can point to the interviews when negotiating terms, shifting leverage toward requiring performance evidence rather than accepting free products and portals — the exchange model the Lakeland FOIA documents exposed.
Amazon faces pressure to substantiate efficacy claims it has effectively co-authored through police statements, raising the reputational cost of the marketing-vetted partnership playbook already documented by Gizmodo.
Third-order effects
If department sign-ups keep outpacing demonstrated benefit, the pattern points to surveillance infrastructure expanding through corporate distribution rather than measured public-safety outcomes — a structural case for independent evaluation requirements before municipal partnerships are approved.
The trend: Police access to privately owned camera networks is scaling faster than any evidence base showing it reduces crime, making corporate-driven surveillance adoption a governance question rather than a policing one.
MUST READ investigation into Ring from @cfarivar. Amazon makes wild claims about how these surveillance doorbells are reducing crime. But after interviewing dozens of police departments, NBC found little evidence to support that. https://www.nbcnews.com/...
@dbrauer
David Brauer on x
Definite contrast between Strib's story on Ring cameras as a crime-fighting tool: http://www.startribune.com/... ... and this NBC news piece from 24 hours earlier: https://www.nbcnews.com/...
@nbcnews
@nbcnews on x
Since 2018, Ring has signed up more than 800 law enforcement agencies as “partners,” offering them access to video footage recorded by millions of customers' cameras. But police say there's no data that links the deal with Ring to a drop in crime. https://www.nbcnews.com/... http…
@byjacobward
Jacob Ward on x
It's not clear to me that if it DID solve crimes we'd know how to weigh that as a society against our values, but this is important reporting. https://twitter.com/...
@iblametom
Thomas Brewster on x
I think I've only seen one court doc where Ring was useful to an investigation. Was a homicide. If you have more, send them my way/post a link! https://twitter.com/...
@matt_cagle
Matt Cagle on x
Not a single police department @NBCNews spoke with “had data to link the overall drop in property crimes to their deal with Ring.” https://www.nbcnews.com/...
@oliviasolon
Olivia Solon on x
One of my fav anecdotes from @cfarivar's investigation into Ring's deals with police is the exasperated cop talking about the racoon videos people send to his department https://www.nbcnews.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@oliviasolon
Olivia Solon on x
@cfarivar So the main beneficiary of the 800+ deals with police departments appears to be Amazon https://www.nbcnews.com/...
@emilybell
Emily Bell on x
Good thread on Ring and it's somewhat sinister deals with police. (What I want to know is whether Ring ever hired an ‘editor-in-chief’ they advertised for a while back ) https://twitter.com/...
@oliviasolon
Olivia Solon on x
Most stories about Amazon Ring's deals with cops have focused on privacy/civil liberty issues, but @cfarivar wanted to know if they actually deterred/solved crime as the company claims. So he spoke to 40 agencies in 8 states to find out https://www.nbcnews.com/...
@0xabad1dea
Badidea on x
a) they're not fixing it, they're adding an opt-out to what should have been an opt-in in the first place b) users should find out you share their data with 3rd parties from you, not from an EFF audit https://twitter.com/...
@stephengandel
Stephen Gandel on x
Scoop from me: Ring tells CBS News it has decided to change its privacy settings, two weeks after an independent study found the company's app was “packed with third-party trackers sending out a plethora of customers' personally identifiable information.” https://www.cbsnews.com/…