Shortly after Carrollton police signed a contract to enter into a partnership with the Amazon-owned doorbell camera company Ring, Assistant Chief Kevin McCoy decided to make sure the company was true to its word.

The department was investigating a homicide toward the end of May 2018, and detectives hoped to access videos recorded by a Ring doorbell camera at the victim's home.

McCoy said he knew the detectives would need the homeowner's consent or a warrant to get the videos, but he called a Ring representative anyway as a test, asking whether the company would provide the video.

He got the answer he had expected and hoped to get: No.

“They did exactly what they said they were going to do. There's no back door ... to get information from them,” McCoy said. “They stuck specifically to the legal contract as it was.”

Ring has drawn scrutiny from privacy advocates over its partnerships with law enforcement. Last week, the company released a list of more than 400 agencies it has partnered with, deepening some people's concerns about surveillance.

Police departments that partner with Ring get access to its social media app, Neighbors. Through the app, they can request video footage from residents who have Ring devices.

Dallas and Fort Worth police are among the more than two dozen agencies in North Texas that have partnered with Ring.

How the partnership works

If police are investigating a crime, they can reach out to nearby neighbors to request video from a specific time frame.

The residents decide whether to share their video, review the footage before sending it or ignore the request.

Authorities and neighbors also can communicate directly with each other on the Neighbors app.

That function has been a benefit in University Park, police Capt. Jim Savage said. It has helped the department quell neighborhood rumors.

“It gives our detectives an opportunity to say, 'Look, that's not what happened; here's what we're doing,' and just try to calm the situation down a little bit," Savage said.

On any average user’s end, the app can send alerts from the Ring “News Team” about crimes that have been reported within a five-mile radius.

Residents who use the app can post videos and photos as they would on other social media platforms, though their names and exact locations are kept private.

People have used the platform to share videos of people stealing packages from their porches or breaking into cars, and they also report hearing gunshots or seeing wildlife such as bobcats and coyotes.

How police benefit

In the Carrollton homicide case, the homeowner consented to sharing the Ring video with police. The footage showed the victim, Randy Duggar, and suspect Danny Aragon-Marquez arriving at the house where they lived as roommates, according to an arrest-warrant affidavit.

Later, the Ring footage captured Aragon-Marquez leaving the house, about 40 minutes before the fire department arrived and found Duggar’s body, police wrote in the affidavit.

Aragon-Marquez was charged with murder and has a trial date in November.

1 / 2Assistant Chief Kevin McCoy poses for a portrait at the Carrollton Police Headquarters in Carrollton, Texas, on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2019. (Lynda M. Gonzalez / Staff Photographer) 2 / 2Carrollton public information officer Jolene DeVito looks through Ring surveillance camera footage at the Carrollton Police Headquarters in Carrollton, Texas, on Thursday, Aug. 29, 2019.(Lynda M. Gonzalez / Staff Photographer)

Fort Worth police spokesman Officer Buddy Calzada said Ring footage has helped the department catch suspects in many types of cases.

Last week, the department released Ring footage of someone swiping a package. That's one type of case in which the footage has been particularly helpful. Just the presence of the doorbell cameras can deter thefts, Calzada said.

“We’ve seen it in cases here where they’ve actually looked at ... [the camera] and covered their face after the fact,” he said. “They don’t take the package because they don’t want to be caught.”

#HeadsUp



Do you know who this package thief is? He stole two packages (and possibly more) from the Woodlands Springs neighborhood.



Please call 817-392-3186 if you know who he is.#PleaseShare#PorchPirate pic.twitter.com/9j8NN6dINx — Fort Worth Police (@fortworthpd) August 29, 2019

Police departments across North Texas say the Neighbors portal makes a routine part of police investigations more efficient.

Ring has offered some departments its devices to distribute to residents. Carrollton, for example, got about a dozen, department spokeswoman Jolene DeVito said.

Last week, the department gave a camera to a woman who had been the victim of identity theft, DeVito said. Packages she didn’t order had been arriving at her home and quickly taken off her porch, so police offered her a camera to give her peace of mind, DeVito said.

Safer Dallas Better Dallas, a crime-reduction organization, received cameras from Ring that have been raffled off by the Dallas Police Department at community events, police Maj. Elaine Page said.

A Frisco police spokesman said the department didn’t want to participate in distributing free cameras.

“We don’t want to come across as sales folks for Ring,” Officer Grant Cottingham said. “We try and keep ourselves neutral, and so we definitely think that it’s a great way to fight crime, but we’ll let Ring do their sales and we’ll do our part.”

How Ring benefits

Officials at Ring have said the company’s mission is rooted in public safety.

"The mission has always been making the neighborhood safer," Eric Kuhn, Ring's general manager of Neighbors, told The Washington Post. "We've had a lot of success in terms of deterring crime and solving crimes that would otherwise not be solved as quickly."

Copies of contracts between Ring and Plano and Frisco police show that the partnership is free for police departments. Neither Ring nor the police partner is to receive compensation as part of the agreement, according to the contract.

In several cases, departments said Ring approached them about the Neighbors app partnership. In Fort Worth, the company reached out to the department, a spokesman said.

When the Carrollton department was deciding whether it would become one of Ring’s law enforcement partners, the question ‘What’s in it for Ring?’ crossed leaders’ minds, McCoy said.

He was directed back to the company's beginnings — when founder Jamie Siminoff went on Shark Tank to pitch what he then called DoorBot.

“If you go back to the early foundings of when he was coming up with this, he had this desire to create a type of Neighborhood Watch program,” McCoy said.

Savage, in University Park, said he thought it was likely that Ring uses the partnership as a way to get “their name out there.”

“They might drum up some business for themselves,” he said.

Privacy concerns

Police departments stress that officers don’t have unfettered access to residents’ videos, nor can they see live video from residents' front doors.

But the speed at which police can request video "fundamentally changes" the process of obtaining evidence, said Evan Greer, deputy director of the digital rights organization Fight for the Future.

Fight for the Future has led a campaign urging local governments to ban partnerships between Ring and police departments.

Greer said the privacy concerns over the Ring police partnerships aren’t just about access to residents’ videos.

“What’s concerning ... is once police collect that footage, there’s no limitations or oversight or accountability for how they can use it,” she said.

She suggested that footage obtained for an specific investigation could be handed over to other law enforcement agencies, including ICE.

“There's nothing to prevent police from going back and looking back at that footage and busting teenagers who are smoking weed or ... trespassing or any number of minor crimes,” Greer said. “That's a real concern.”

She sees the partnerships as a way for Ring to link itself to law enforcement and government.

“It's pretty outrageous that a private company is finding a way to profit by entering into these partnerships and essentially turning the police into their marketing arm,” Greer said.

But McCoy, in Carrollton, said it was important to the department that the Neighbors app be available to anyone — that residents don't have to pay to use it and that the app could be used in conjunction with other brands of home video surveillance equipment.

“We wanted to be sure that there was not any backdoor way to use law enforcement to endorse their product to make more money,” he said. “Which is why we liked the aspect of it that you could upload any video to it.”

Cottingham, a Frisco police spokesman, sees protecting residents' privacy as part of the department's job.

“There are privacy concerns, so that can be considered negative," he said. "But the upside is the fact that it allows us to increase our investigation abilities."

Borrowing a line from another officer in the department, Cottingham said the partnership gives police tools to create a “neighborhood watch for the 21st century.”

“Our job is to make sure ... [residents] are safe, and if crimes happen within the city, that we have every tool available to us to investigate those crimes,” Cottingham said.

Which North Texas departments are participating

More than two dozen departments in North Texas have signed on to the partnership, according to a map Ring published last week.