Amazon"s Ring, the well-known home security company, is expanding its Community Requests feature to enhance neighborhood safety with the collaboration of additional local public safety agencies. Ring introduced Community Requests in the United States earlier this year, allowing customers to assist law enforcement by voluntarily sharing video footage captured on their Ring devices in response to incidents occurring within their vicinity.
Ring has now announced that it will extend access to its Community Requests feature to agencies using Flock Safety’s Nova platform and FlockOS, secure platforms designed for evidence management and investigations.
Flock Safety specializes in security hardware and software focused on automated license plate recognition (ALPR), video surveillance, gunfire detection, and data intelligence platforms. It operates in over 5,000 communities across 49 U.S. states, with its network performing billions of vehicle scans monthly.
Ring"s Community Requests enables authorized local public safety agencies to request video footage from Ring users located near a specific incident. Ring says that these requests come with stringent privacy safeguards and that agencies must specify the exact location, a timeframe, a unique investigation code, and details about the incident under investigation to make a request, only after which the request is securely sent to Ring.
Ring added that users will receive a notification but will retain full control over whether to share their videos, and they can opt out of notifications entirely. The company also mentioned that agencies do not have visibility into who receives notifications or who chooses to comply. When a user shares their Ring data with Flock, the data will integrate into Flock"s platforms like FlockOS and Nova, which law enforcement agencies will then use for evidence collection and crime solving.
Ring says that it plans to extend Community Requests to other established providers in the future as part of this ongoing initiative.
With this expansion, more communities across the U.S. can engage proactively in public safety efforts by sharing vital video evidence when incidents occur. Ring says that the expansion will take place in the coming few months.