Amazon Ring cameras deeply involved in police enforcement with Flock Safety, deal with Axon

Amazon’s Ring security cameras are moving deeper into law enforcement operations with a new deal with Flock Safety that will allow citizens who own Ring cameras to share footage useful in criminal investigations, and will make that video available to law enforcement agencies using Flock’s software.

This is the second recent deal to bring Amazon Ring’s security technology to the law enforcement market in new ways, with Ring recently announcing similar initiatives. axon enterprise.

Axon’s direct competitor, Flock, works with an estimated 6,000 communities and 5,000 law enforcement agencies, and CEO and founder Garrett Langley says the technology is expected to have a “long tail” in public safety in an estimated 17,000 cities across the country.

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

The Ring Community Request feature will be available on the FlockOS and Flock Nova platforms under contract with local public safety agencies. This would allow law enforcement officials to request video evidence directly from Ring’s cameras, but it would be up to the public to decide whether to share the video. Police requests are reflected in the so-called Ring Neighbors Feed, which sends pings to camera users in areas identified as being linked to a crime, allowing camera owners to share their videos. The video is stored in a secure environment and can only be used in a single criminal investigation.

“To me, it’s clear that America has a crime problem,” Langley said. “We’re focused on businesses and cities, and Ring is definitely the leader in home security. Being able to partner with them means safer communities and being able to do it in a way that the public can opt in to,” he said, adding that Ring was the first to reach out to Flock Safety about a potential deal.

The law enforcement technology market, particularly surveillance cameras, is controversial by its nature, with concerns regarding privacy, racial profiling, use of surveillance information for unauthorized purposes, and weak security protocols. This isn’t Ring’s first attempt to distribute video footage more widely. The previous form of this type of technology, Ring Request for Assistance, was shut down in 2024. According to Consumer Reports, the tool was used by at least 2,500 police agencies. Ring has also worked directly with law enforcement agencies in the past to distribute cameras to local communities.

Langley said there is a big difference between RFA and the new community request feature. “The RFA was in the Ring Data app. There was no chain of custody,” he said. “In this case, the request is sent in the Ring app, but the footage shared by the user is sent 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 sector work, Flock contracts with an estimated 1,000 private sector organizations for its technology.

Although Ring does not release exact data on the number of cameras in use, Langley said that given the fact that there may be tens of thousands of Ring cameras in communities across the country, having this option in criminal investigations is a huge benefit for law enforcement, and law enforcement agencies are looking for it, too.

A 2023 report from Politico estimates that 10 million Americans have a Ring camera installed in their home.

Mr. Ring could not be reached for comment.

Mr Langley said he believed the development was a better option for both police and the public compared to the current way criminal investigations are conducted. “The idea is to help law enforcement be more efficient and conduct investigations faster,” he said. And for the public, he said, “If there was a shooting in my neighborhood today, and the police went door-to-door asking if I had camera footage, it could create an environment where it would be difficult to say no.”

“This is an environment where people are in control. They don’t have to participate in certain demands, and that level of control hasn’t existed before,” Langley said. “The other option is for the police to show up on their doorstep, and people feel very coerced. And now law enforcement has a more efficient way to do it, and we as citizens can say, ‘No, we don’t want to help,’ for whatever reason.”

The partnership has no direct impact on Flock Safety’s revenue, and Langley said the partnership is free to all law enforcement customers. “If we accomplish our mission of helping the community, we will find a way to generate revenue. We do not intend to monetize this partnership, but we believe it will drive adoption of our core product,” he said. “I think everyone will use it because it will be enabled for free for all customers,” he added.

Flock Safety currently assists law enforcement with nearly 1 million arrests a year, and “this will increase that number even further,” Langley said.

An exact date for rollout on the Flock platform has not been set, but Flock Safety says it is imminent.

Public debate on surveillance technology and crime and safety

It will definitely attract harsh attention. In addition to controversies surrounding Ring, such as the FTC settlement over allegations of lax security, communities across the U.S. continue to debate the use of technology like Flock, and some contracts have been canceled amid public debate even as the business has grown.

Langley said there is no rational argument left for some critics, including privacy-focused groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which have long criticized Ring and similar technologies. “There are certain parts of this country that don’t prioritize safety, and like me, Jamie[Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, who recently returned to active leadership of the company]believes that everyone has the right to be safe and that when they commit a crime, they should be held accountable,” Langley said.

For those who criticize the use of surveillance technology in law enforcement, Langley said, “There’s nothing you can do but shut down the business.” “They live in a hypothetical world and I live in the real world. We have to do something about it.”

EFF argues that the reality of surveillance technology exposes abuses.

“Of course people have a right to be safe, but what companies like Flock and Ring fail to acknowledge is that their technology doesn’t make people safer, it just exposes them to a 24-hour, warrantless digital dragnet that monitors everyone, whether they suspect a crime or not,” said Jennifer Pinsoff, 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 an age of increasing authoritarianism. Privacy is not dangerous, but abandoning it for a false sense of security is extremely dangerous,” she added.

Axon’s stock price is up 500% over the past five years, and 50% this year alone, certainly sending a signal that the market sees this business as good.

With both the CEOs of major technology companies and President Trump weighing in on bringing federal troops to police cities, public sentiment about crime levels remains high, albeit with partisan leanings.

A recent AP poll found that two-thirds of Americans think crime is a big problem in the United States, and that trend is even higher in urban areas (81%). Support for this view is higher among Republicans (96%), but a majority of Democrats (68%) also feel the same way about cities. A 2024 Pew Research poll found that more Americans across both parties prioritize crime as an issue than when Joe Biden first took office, but also found that Americans are more likely to view crime as worse nationally than in their local communities. Gallup’s 2024 poll found that public concern about crime has declined from its 2023 poll, when it reached an all-time high.

Langley said political momentum is on the side of flock safety and the increased use of technology in law enforcement. “Look at the political trends. We tried a social experiment of being tolerant of crime, and it didn’t end well,” he said.