BOISE, Idaho (CBS2) — Hundreds of police departments across the country are partnering with Ring - the company made famous for making doorbell cameras.
In the Treasure Valley, the Meridian Police Department is the only one currently doing it.
Your phone has always kept you in contact with the police by calling 911, but now your phone allows you to join the investigation into crime in your neighborhood. And, possibly even help police crack some cases.
"It’s been a great tool for us to see what’s going on in the community and communicate with our community partner to better understand how we can help them," said Jamie Leslie who's with MPD.
Video shows people doing suspicious things near neighborhood homes, like looking in a window before knocking. Or the same person ultimately walked into the homeowner's backyard.
The app allows neighbors to upload videos like this as a heads up to fellow neighbors and police.
Police will reach out to people on the app for information, and you don't have to have any Ring products to use it.
This is a pretty good way of reaching out to a larger quantity of people relatively easy," Leslie said. "They can read it if they have something to give to us they can provide it to us. If they don’t they can get on with their day and not disturb their day.
Another video recently uploaded shows a woman hopping out of a really nice SUV and stealing a package off of a porch. Suspicious people videos and package thefts top the list. Meridian detectives see this as a valuable tool into the future.
"Yeah we’ll stick with it," Leslie explained. "It’s been a great tool for us to communicate information we’ve had a couple of cases where we’ve used geo notification looking for any videos that they had during times frames when a crime happened, and we’ve received some videos back. We haven’t solved any crimes necessarily from [the Ring videos] but it creates a better partnership with the community for sure."
The Caldwell Police Department, Nampa Police Department and Ada County Sheriff's Office are either in the process of sealing a deal with Ring or are interested.
The Boise Police Department and Canyon County Sheriff's Office are not using it at this time. CBS2 reached out to find out why, but have not heard back.
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