Slashdot Mirror
A Smart Doorbell Company Is Working With Cops To Report 'Suspicious' People, Activities (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Smart doorbell company Ring is making it easier for customers to call the cops on "suspicious" people and activities. The startup, which Amazon acquired for reportedly "more than" $1 billion this year, uses security cameras to let people monitor their entryways. Now, it's launching its Neighbors app -- a platform for reporting crime that, so far, police in Fort Lauderdale and Orlando, and the Ventura Sheriff's Department, have access to. "Over the next days and weeks, law enforcement across the U.S. will be joining Neighbors," a Ring spokesperson told me over email.
The app, while presented as a crime-fighting aid, could also be a new place for paranoid people to profile fellow citizens, as similar platforms in the past have turned out to be. According to the company's statement in a press release for Neighbors today: "In addition to receiving push notifications about potential security issues, app users can see recent crime and safety posts uploaded by their neighbors, the Ring team and local law enforcement via an interactive map. If a neighbor notices suspicious activity in their area, they can post their own text, photo or video and alert the community to proactively prevent crime."
The app, while presented as a crime-fighting aid, could also be a new place for paranoid people to profile fellow citizens, as similar platforms in the past have turned out to be. According to the company's statement in a press release for Neighbors today: "In addition to receiving push notifications about potential security issues, app users can see recent crime and safety posts uploaded by their neighbors, the Ring team and local law enforcement via an interactive map. If a neighbor notices suspicious activity in their area, they can post their own text, photo or video and alert the community to proactively prevent crime."
In Florida it was decided that it was OK to shoot someone much larger than yourself who had you down on the ground and was slamming your head into the concrete. That's not the same thing as just shooting anyone who looks suspicious.
My daughter's neighborhood had several cars broken into. The neighborhood watch has a facebook group that alerted members. They all polled their surveillance cameras and each found the same van casing their houses throughout the area. They emailed all the pictures to the local Sheriff's department and they caught the van in another area the next night. Cameras are everywhere now and if neighbors unite they have an amazing amount of coverage.
trayvon made the first contact not the other way around, per trayvons girlfriend under oath. last i checked, walking behind someone isnt a crime
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You're conflating "Stand Your Ground" with "Castle Doctrine".
Stand Your Ground applies anywhere - not just your home. In states without Stand Your Ground even if you feel your life is in danger, you have whats referred to as a "Duty to retreat". IE, run away if you can. Stand Your Ground states that you have no duty to retreat and if your life is in danger then you can respond with deadly force.
Castle Doctrine applies in your home, and it not only means that you have no duty to retreat, but also that the mere presence of an intruder in your home is by default considered a threat to your life, and so you can use deadly force immediately. IE, if you come downstairs and there's a stranger standing in your living room you're clear to shoot - even if they have said or done nothing else. Their mere presence is considered a threat.
Castle Doctrine does have it's limits though. It's not applicable cases where home owners have "baited" criminals into the home, or where the criminal has already surrendered then the threat is considered ended (ie, you can't tie up an intruder and then shoot them, nor can you leave your door open with a stack of cash visible while you wait in the corner with a gun).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Well, it worked for me.
We had a gun in the house, and I was a young child, I think I was likely in about 5th-6th grade when we got it.
My dad showed me how the pistol worked, and let me shoot it, etc.
They also put the fear of God into me if I ever so much as thought about touching it without supervision.
I was a latch key kid...both parents worked, I came home alone most school days and when I was about 13yrs, I would spend summer days home alone.
I was told where the guns was, and I knew it was loaded.
One day when home alone, it was raining. A strange man came up and stayed in our door way, He was asking for a drink of water, I refused behind the locked door. I was frightened....as per my parent's instructions, I was then ok'ed for me to get the gun.
I retrieved it, I chambered a round and held it, till the storm passed, and he finally left.
After I felt safe, I dropped the magazine, un-chambered the round, put the round back in magazine and put magazine back in gun, and replaced it where it was usually hidden.
After I did that,I called my Mom at work and told her what happened, etc.
Are kids more stupid today and can't handle this?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I've lived in large single family home residential neighborhood in a city (looks suburban, but is in the city) for 19 years and over the past 5+ years, the amount of nuisance theft has skyrocketed. Just on my *block* it's not unusual to hear about a car being rifled, strange "door to door" sales people with no materials/identification/logos. We had a rash of car entries using keyless entry repeaters and a couple of sneak burglaries (snatching purses from kitchen tables). Over a week last November, the entire larger neighborhood was hit by package thieves, including my house. 3 different people had footage of the car involved.
I had a long conversation with my council member about what can be done and was told that we should just report it and then do insurance or whatever. I asked why we couldn't get more police patrols and was told our area was "too low crime" (the numbers say we're the lowest crime area in the city) and there wasn't sufficient resources.
So what the fuck? Just put up with it? That's the answer? Or just change my thinking, it *must* be my racial bias?
Or this is somehow really ad-hoc redistributive economic justice, and I'm just too racist to notice?
I love the scare quotes around "suspicious", like that's just some crazy impossible concept.
A losing effort.
The city has had at least two controversial shootings in recent years and activists are wholly opposed to anything involving "more police". One shooting involved an African American male who fought white officers and tried to take their gun and was shot and killed. The OTHER shooting happened about 1.5 miles from where I lived and involved an African American (first Somali immigrant police officer) officer who shot an unarmed white woman who had actually initiated the police call.
So it's a total political clusterfuck with the cops in this town. In last year's mayoral election, a major candidate actually suggested disarming the cops. Another major candidate rose to prominence in the precinct occupation/protest which went on for a month or two (in addition to disrupting things like the Park Board meetings, screaming racism and preventing the meeting from taking place). We use ranked choice voting and both candidates polled top 4, so there's that kind of crazy here.
The latter shooting (white woman shot by Somali cop) has everyone spinning in circles. The African American activists and white liberals don't know whether to be outraged or not because while they're trained to be outraged at police shootings, the racial role reversal here has them flummoxed. The pro-police "conservatives" who usually give the cops the benefit of the doubt are annoyed, but are equally flummoxed because a black cop shot a white woman.
The 100% democratic city government just wants it all to go away. The DA had to turn to the Grand Jury (after saying he would no longer use it after the previous shooting) to forcibly extract testimony as all the officers even tangentially involved in the Officer's career and training went blue wall of silence, making it take 8 months to get an indictment. The so-called legal experts are calling the odds of conviction 3-2 against due to the incredible lack of evidence (body cameras -- turned off, no witnesses, etc).
So yeah, run for city council on a "we need more police patrols" platform? Uh, no.
I'm not a fan of police state tactics by any means, but shit, what else can we turn to?