Amazon Ring cameras deeper into policing with Flock Safety, Axon deals

Amazon’s Ring security cameras further deepen law enforcement efforts with a new deal with Flock Safety; This agreement will allow citizens with Ring cameras to share footage that can assist in criminal investigations and will make the video available to law enforcement using Flock software.

This is the second deal to bring Amazon Ring security technology to the law enforcement market in new ways; Ring recently announced a similar effort. Axon Corporate.

Flock, a direct competitor to Axon, works with an estimated 6,000 communities and 5,000 law enforcement agencies and sees a “long tail” for the technology in the public safety sector with an estimated 17,000 cities across the U.S., according to its CEO and founder, Garrett Langley.

Flock Safety was ranked #7 on the 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50 list.

Ring Community Requests The feature will be available on FlockOS and Flock Nova platforms with which local public security institutions have agreements. This will allow law enforcement to request video evidence directly from Ring cameras, but citizens will decide whether to share the video. Police requests will go to the Ring Neighbors feed, which pings camera users in a designated area related to the crime, and camera owners can then share the video, which is stored in a secure environment and can only be used for a single crime investigation.

“It’s clear to me that we have a crime problem in America,” Langley said. “We’re focused on businesses and cities, and Ring is absolutely the leader in home security. Being able to partner with them will lead to much safer communities and do it in a way that allows for public participation,” he said, adding that Ring was the first to reach out to Flock Safety about a potential deal.

The law enforcement technology market, and security cameras in particular, is inherently controversial due to concerns about privacy, racial profiling, use of surveillance information for unapproved purposes, and weak security protocols. This isn’t Ring’s first attempt to distribute video footage more widely. An earlier example of this type of technology, Ring for Help, Closed in 2024. According to Consumer Reports, this vehicle was used by at least 2,500 law enforcement agencies. There is also a ring worked directly with law enforcement in the past to distribute cameras to communities.

Langley said there is a significant difference between the RFA and the new Community Requests feature. “RFA was inside the Ring data app. There was no chain of custody,” he said. “In this case, the request is sent in the Ring app, while all images shared by users go to the Flock platform, which is completely secure,” he said. “This is what we do every day for businesses and municipalities,” he added. In addition to its public agency work, Flock has contracts with an estimated 1,000 private sector organizations for its technology.

While Ring doesn’t release exact data on the number of cameras in use, Langley said having this option in criminal investigations is a huge advantage for law enforcement and law enforcement wants it given the fact that there may be tens of thousands of Ring cameras in communities across the country.

2023 report from Politico An estimated 10 million Americans have Ring cameras in their homes.

Amazon declined to provide data on Ring cameras in circulation or any comment on recent deals in the law enforcement market.

Langley says he sees this development as a better option for both police and the public compared to the way crime studies are currently conducted. “This is about helping law enforcement be more efficient and conduct investigations faster,” he said. For citizens, he said, “If there is a shooting in my neighborhood today and the police go door to door and ask if you have camera footage, it can create an environment where it is difficult to say no.”

“This is an environment where people will have control. They don’t have to agree to a particular demand, and that level of control didn’t exist before,” Langley said. “The alternative is to have a cop come to your front door and people feel pretty obligated, and now law enforcement has a more effective way and we as citizens can say ‘no, we don’t want to help’ for whatever reason.”

The partnership has no direct revenue impact on Herd Safety; This will be offered free of charge to every law enforcement customer, Langley said. “We will find ways to make money if we achieve the mission of helping communities. We won’t make money from this partnership, but we believe it will drive adoption of essential products,” he said. “It will open for free for every customer and I think they will all use it,” he added.

Flock Safety currently supports law enforcement in making close to a million arrests a year, Langley said, and “this will help increase that number.”

No exact date has been set for its launch on the Flock platform, but Flock Safety says it’s close.

Surveillance technology and public debate on crime and security

It will definitely attract scrutiny. In addition to the controversy surrounding Ring, including the FTC settlement over allegations of lax security, communities across the US continue to debate the use of technologies like Flock’s. contracts are being canceled Even in the midst of public debate business is growing.

Langley says of some critics, such as privacy-focused organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Longtime critic of Ring and there is no longer any reasonable debate to be had about similar technologies. “There’s a part of the country that doesn’t prioritize security, and Jamie, like us, [Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, who recently returned to active leadership of the company] “I believe everyone has the right to be safe and that people should be held accountable if they commit a crime,” Langley said.

“There’s nothing we can do but shut down our business,” Langley said of those who criticize the use of surveillance technology in law enforcement. “They live in a world full of assumptions, I live in a world full of facts, and we have to do something about it.”

EFF argues that the reality of surveillance technology is to uncover abuses.

“Of course people have the right to be safe, but what companies like Flock and Ring fail to acknowledge is that their technology does not make people safer, it just exposes them to a 24-hour, warrantless network of digital traps that track everyone, whether or not they are suspected of a crime,” said Jennifer Pinsof, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This is an affront to our freedoms and a recipe for abuse and real harm, especially in increasingly authoritarian times. Privacy is not dangerous, but sacrificing privacy for a false sense of security is very dangerous,” he added.

With Axon’s share price up 500% in the last five years and 50% this year alone, the market has certainly sent a signal that it’s on a roll.

At a time when both prominent tech CEOs and President Trump are weighing in on having federal troops police cities, public sentiment about crime levels remains high, albeit based on partisan leanings.

A. AP’s latest poll It found that two-thirds of people in the US think crime is a big problem, and this feeling is even higher in cities (81%). There is greater support for this view among Republicans (96%), but a majority of Democrats (68%) feel similarly about cities. 2024 Pew Research survey More Americans on both parties appeared to prioritize crime than when Joe Biden first took office, but it also found that Americans tend to view crime as worse nationally than in their local communities. Gallup survey dated 2024 The 2023 reading of public concern about crime found a decline that reached the highest level in the survey’s history.

Langley says political momentum is in favor of Herd Safety and increased use of technology in law enforcement. “Look at the political ebb and flow. We tried the soft-on-crime social experiment and it didn’t end well,” he said.