Local law enforcement reacts to 'Ring' making footage more difficult to get for police

Investigations could be slowed down with a ‘Ring’ that could make it more difficult for law enforcement to obtain doorbell camera footage.

The Ring Neighbor app used to allow users to assist investigators by sending video directly to police through the app with the ‘Request for Assistance’ tool.

That tool allowed investigators to send a request to people with cameras in the area asking for help. That has now been taken away.

Ring camera owners can still send footage to police according to a spokesperson with the company, but they now must download the video and send it to authorities separately.

Northern Cambria police chief Derek Stitt said people may not be as willing to share video after the changes.

“It was actually fairly common for law enforcement in responding to incidents of shots fired, incidents where we believed somebody maybe left on foot, or drove away from a specific area. It would help us very quickly begin to fill in some of the pieces,” Cambria County district attorney Greg Neugebauer said. “Being able to get at this information quickly and from people who voluntarily signed up to participate in that was a huge help to law enforcement to protect the community.”

Because of the new policy some officials said they might have to use more traditional investigative methods like knocking on neighbors’ doors in some cases.

Authorities can still ask for help on the neighbor app according to ring, but if video is not voluntarily sent to officials outside the app, they will now have to file a search warrant. Neugebauer said a search warrant takes hours to go through, even in the best cases.

“Timing is a lot of the time of the essence and the ability to not have to get a warrant because people are voluntarily participating in a program that allows law enforcement to look at ring video footage expeditiously made a huge difference in some cases,” Neugebauer said.”

A Ring spokesperson said nothing has changed in cases where a warrant is filed.

Investigators emphasize that the policy change should not change the outcome of investigations even if it may slow it down.

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