The Westbrook Police Department has joined a home security camera users site, which they say is an added tool to help them investigate and solve crimes.
Police Capt. Steve Goldberg likens the approach to canvassing a neighborhood using technology. Police are able to solicit information through the Ring Neighbors app by posting requests on the users portal.
“We can put it out to the whole jurisdiction or limit it down to the area where we believe there may be video. People will see our request, and if they have video and want to share it with us they will be able to,” Goldberg said. “It allows us to canvass more people in a more efficient manner.”
The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has concerns, however, about the police use of private security cameras and privacy, especially when taking into account the “over-policing” and “hyper-surveillance” of people of color.
“What we need is transparency and democratic control over how – or even whether – police can use these devices and the data they produce,” said Michael Kebede, policy counsel at the ACLU of Maine.
Goldberg said Westbrook police will only request video for specific crimes, not for general surveillance. Police have no way of telling how many Ring cameras there are in the city or where they are located, and police are unable to see any footage not directly shared with them, Goldberg said.
“We also don’t have access to people’s cameras, so we can’t see what may be recorded or not,” he said.
Ring is a private company, owned and operated by Amazon, that offers surveillance cameras and other security products primarily for homeowners. Users can check their cameras from their smart phones. Using the Neighbors app, camera owners can post footage or questions for others within a certain geographic radius.
Westbrook police also are able to post their own video on the portal for input from residents or to see if private cameras caught the same suspect nearby. They can respond to publicly posted footage for more information, such as if a video posted by a resident appears to show a suspect they’re looking for or shows a crime being committed.
“We can comment and respond, and seek additional information from the poster so we can better investigate,” Goldberg said.
The department started using the app just last weekend, Goldberg said, but Ring cameras have been used to solve crimes in the city before, including in December when “a Ring camera captured two individuals doing criminal mischief to a residence.”
“We were able to use the camera to identify the suspects. We didn’t even know about this program back then, but this is what turned us on to it,” he said.
Goldberg said the program will “be helpful in a number of different situations, to include identifying motor vehicle burglary suspects, or pretty much for help in identifying suspects for any type of crime that happens in a neighborhood.”
The ACLU’s privacy concerns mostly lie with the potential for abuse with systems like Ring without oversight.
Kebede said they’d like to see more resident input on when and how these cameras are used to remove the risk of targeted or continual surveillance.
“Mass surveillance poses serious civil liberties threats for everyone,” Kebede said. “It’s especially harmful for Black people and other people of color, who are already subject to over-policing and hyper-surveillance. Turning neighborhoods into the eyes and ears of the police does not make us safer.”
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