KNOCK-KNOCK! Amazon's Ring doorbells may NOT actually reduce crime 🕵️
The short version: CNET's Alfred Ng digs into crime data from Ring's earliest police partner cities and finds little evidence the doorbells actually cut crime, despite the marketing.
Our Take
Credit to CNET and reporter Alfred Ng for doing the unglamorous work here: pulling actual crime stats from cities that were among the first to partner with Ring, and finding that the promised safety payoff mostly isn't there. That matters because "it stops crime" is the entire sales pitch police departments use to justify handing out free cameras, striking data-sharing deals, and building informal surveillance networks with private companies. If the core claim doesn't hold up, the whole bargain deserves a second look.
This is the same playbook we track with Flock Safety's ALPR cameras. Departments roll out a fleet of always-on cameras, tout a few solved cases as proof of concept, and quietly expand the network — while independent scrutiny of the actual crime-reduction numbers lags years behind. Ring's doorbells at least stay in someone's yard; Flock's cameras log every car that passes a given point, whether or not anyone's a suspect, and feed that into a searchable, often multi-agency database. The accountability gap is the same, just bigger.
If your city or county has quietly added Flock cameras to intersections near you, check our map to see what's already been documented, and use our action guide if you want to push back at a city council meeting or file a records request. Marketing claims about "safety" shouldn't be the only evidence lawmakers ever see.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of CNET, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.