The next-gen neighborhood watch program is here, and it’s still largely packaged by Amazon’s Ring and its Neighbors app. While other tech companies scurry to win your smart home platform (are you going to be a Works with Google Assistant family? Did you already commit to Apple HomeKit?), Amazon has focused on the community-safety layer — one that now operates with tighter rules around police access after Ring removed in-app police video requests.
Its home security brand Ring historically partnered with a rapidly growing list of public safety agencies to establish Ring as the security system of choice for not just individual homes, but for entire communities. By mid‑2022, more than 2,100 agencies were on Neighbors according to reporting, and in 2024 Ring sunset the Neighbors “Request for Assistance” tool, ending in‑app police video solicitations and shifting access to user consent or legal process per coverage and company guidance.
If you live in the jurisdiction of one of the 400 participating police forces across the U.S. who have entered into video-sharing agreements with Ring, you may have been offered discounted Ring products or invited to enter Amazon-subsidized giveaways. As early reporting noted those 400 partnerships, public disclosures later indicated that more than 2,100 public safety agencies were on Neighbors by mid‑2022 source. In 2024, Ring ended in‑app police video requests on Neighbors and agencies now rely on direct user sharing or lawful process to obtain footage. After installing, many users simply participate in the Neighbors app; whether to share is voluntary.
Here’s how it works: Should a crime occur in your vicinity, police may reach out to you and request your camera’s footage. Agencies can no longer broadcast mass “Requests for Assistance” through Neighbors, but they can still obtain videos with your consent or via a warrant, subpoena, or court order as covered and as Ring describes. You are free to share or decline (though anonymity is not certain). Ring also offers a social media component, the Neighbors app. Post footage of suspicious trespassers or package thieves — and browse what was captured by other Ring cameras nearby.
Best case scenario: Thanks to your Ring camera, police are able to apprehend culprits. Worst case scenario: You contribute to the racial profiling that Motherboard reported as prevalent in the Neighbors app — they found that people of color were disproportionately tagged as “suspicious” people or “strangers” by Neighbors users. Civil-liberties groups continue to warn that these dynamics persist and can burden marginalized communities according to EFF.
From the consumer’s perspective, there’s plenty of solid reasons to go with video-sharing agreements with Ring for home security. It’s an affordable system with easy setup and useful automations — you can schedule a series of actions based on whether your alarm is set to “home” or “away” — though many camera features (saved video history, smart alerts, and sharing) require an active Ring Protect subscription per Ring. In today’s market, Ring remains strong on motion intelligence but still lacks native 24/7 continuous recording compared with some competitors, so weigh features against your needs.
What’s more, you can get most of the benefits of home security even without professional monitoring, but note that saving and reviewing recorded videos and using advanced alerts generally requires a Ring Protect plan; without it, you’ll have live view and notifications but no video history. Professional monitoring for Ring Alarm is available only with the Protect Pro tier per Ring’s plan details — it’s still plug and play, just plan for the subscription if you want full functionality.
Frequent, uncontextualized alerts about petty crime and strangers glimpsed on the street could foster fear and reify prejudice.
But as tech journalist Jared Newman recently wrote in Fast Company, “Personally, I’m wary of a company that quietly encourages police departments to help sell more doorbell cameras.” Even after Ring’s 2024 policy change ended in‑app police video requests, questions remain about how neighborhood‑watch apps shape fear and behavior — the larger issue posed by neighborhood watches in the era of mass surveillance.
When the FBI publishes its annual report on U.S. crime, it repeatedly includes a caveat: beware of drawing conclusions. Statistics don’t tell the whole story — positive trends aren’t represented alongside negative ones, and low-level crimes can be lumped in with serious ones, misleadingly inflating numbers and “adversely affecting communities and their residents.” Meanwhile, independent tracking shows many violent offenses have declined in recent periods across large cities, but those macro shifts cannot be credibly attributed to Ring or police–Ring video‑sharing according to the Council on Criminal Justice; there remains no rigorous, peer‑reviewed evidence that Ring partnerships reduce neighborhood crime at scale as policy analysts note.
That reminder to take stats with a grain of salt accompanies a once-a-year report. The Ring Neighbor’s app delivers a local crime report once a week. Frequent, uncontextualized alerts about petty crime and strangers glimpsed on the street could foster fear and reify prejudice, a risk that remains even after in‑app police requests ended in 2024. Maybe in the next update, a gentle reminder of neighborliness can pop up when you get home and Ring flips on the lights and sets your thermostat to 72 degrees.
