CPD partners with Ring Doorbell to fight crime

Our Take

Ring's pitch to police departments is always the same: free crime-fighting tech, no cost to taxpayers, just a little cooperation. What that framing skips is that Amazon is building a privatized surveillance grid one doorbell at a time, and now Chicago is set to plug in. Once CPD joins the roughly 400 other agencies already using Ring's law enforcement portal, officers get a direct line to request video from residents near a reported incident — turning your porch camera into an unpaid extension of the department.

Ring and Flock are different products, but they're the same story: a for-profit company selling police access to a growing web of always-on cameras, with little public debate about retention, sharing, or who else gets to see the footage down the line. Amazon has already shown it will hand over Ring data to police without a warrant or the owner's consent when it decides the situation qualifies as an emergency, and partnerships like this one give departments an even easier on-ramp to ask first, warrant later — or never.

Chicago residents rarely get a vote on whether their neighborhood becomes part of these networks. If you want to know what's already watching your block, check out our camera map, and if you'd rather your city not sleepwalk into blanket surveillance, see what you can do at take action.