Q & A

This question does more to reveal the non transparent approach the City of Dallas has taken when it comes to releasing crime data to the public. It also seems to be hypocritical from the viewpoint of Mayor Johnsons implementation of additional surveillance in various parts of the City. The data shows Rings do not deter property crime yet, the city continues to implement surveillance cameras into the streets. The graphs on this site make aware, that the city relies on the data and metrics of "safe" versus "dangerous" neighborhoods. This logic threatens to conceptualize existing racial narratives about neighborhoods which also  limits public understanding of where and how crimes are committed. The city of Dallas releases crime data to an open portal with various categories that is made public. However,  Police Chief Eddie Garcia and the City of Dallas’ plan to remove the open data police information. We already know that these DPD crime reports are skewed with filler data sets or data that is lacking information like physical addresses. The city is now taking it a step further and trying to do away with or delay public city crime reporting. This takes complete transparency out of DPD which shows that the department can hide or manipulate data to mold the department’s image or narrative as they see fit. This limit of police-community transparency and the public’s ability to find out what is happening in their neighborhoods is the same approach that Amazon takes by hiding behind the privatization of the company. More sinister, DPD Chief Garcia said publicly he supports the changes, noting that we are “not the only city who does this.”

Furthermore, adding additional surveillance goes against Johnsons statement that crime has fallen yet, he needs more surveillance. This doesn't add up- even to a layman. Instead, it shows that the City is using hidden or misinformed data, additional data selection sets and redistricting to implement more cameras in higher ethnic and lower income areas.  We see the labeling of 'dangerous' neighborhoods from police that don't have a high number of CCTV surveillance or high ownership of Ring Cameras. Due to the lack of surveillance in these lower income areas, police have now been able to label these communities as, "hot spot zones". These hot spot zones are determined not by crime itself, but the response of police force in the area. This signals that the areas labeled as dangerous is directly a result from police interaction. We this within the data sets that show police engagement on the rise in predominantly minority areas. This reifies the racial tensions within communities due to engagement from police and lack of trust from hot spot residents. This is nothing new as, Dallas residents have high tensions when it comes to police engagement in more diverse neighborhoods. The push for surveillance allows the police to redirect the dialogue that police feel threatened to patrol in these 'dangerous' neighborhoods. The city propels the narrative that DPD must rely on surveillance to do the job for police- yet, the data does not show it actually deters crime. This is an important issue especially when it comes to the City and DPD Chiefs push to completely remove public  crime reports. Currently, if we feel that there is little to no transparency now from DPD then imagine if city does away with the open crime portal. As residents, we should be very concerned about the direction and further lack of full disclosure from the city and DPD when it comes to reporting crime.  If the police can surveil citizens at anytime at full gratis, who is keeping police accountable- especially if they no longer have to report crime data to the public? The city will continue to make claims that surveillance deters crime while slowly hiding the data that proves otherwise. 

Furthering the lack of transparency, (which is a common theme between the City of Dallas and Amazon Ring) the City will not publicize the actual coordinates and locations of these "hot spot zones". Instead, the city will only reference to a general area leaving residents wondering where these high areas of crime are actually being committed and why the push for additional surveillance. This spurs additional questions to be answered: 

1. Why even reference these zones and not make public? For one, the city has to maintain that the DPD are doing their job while pushing the narrative for "Safer Dallas" through the normalization of surveillance to deter crime. The City promotes a positive Safer Dallas dialogue to prevent crime in lower demographic areas as well as a united "need" to make locals feel that surveillance is the answer. It is the continuous push to keep residents afraid and in the dark when it comes to how the City of Dallas is actually handing crime -  while not revealing the full plan to the public. 

2. If these areas are so crime ridden, why doesn't the City suggest people avoid the suggested hot spot zones? The city prides themselves on the Police force to make people feel safe when visiting neighborhoods- so why are they hiding these areas? Comments from city officials reveal that impoverished or ethnic areas allegedly have the highest crime- which pushes the dialogue for regentrification, more eyes in the streets and the normalization of surveillance as a mechanism to deter crime. It doesn't stop there-  the lack of regulation and oversight over the police department and city officials leads me (and others) to believe that DPD are funneling funds in various districts under the guise to "protect" against crime in these areas. It is ironic that District 1- not even listed on the DPD highest crime rate in 2021  (and also mentioned in the 2020 FBI graph) was 10 years ago the most crime ridden and has since seen gentrification, gerrymandering and more money directed to the District. These changes have promoted new developments like Trinity Groves and the Bishop Arts District. Both areas have a very different demographic than 10 years ago. It is apparent that the city and DPD uses data as they see fit.  

This reformatting of data can be seen in my DFW District charts.  Noted in the charts, stolen property was on the rise in every DFW district except one. Only one district in DFW showed stolen property crime to be lower than the year before. Most districts were trending at <100% + (which is another vague variable from DPD).  The open data portal shows stolen property crime to be over <100% but the portal will not reveal the actual percentage over 100.  More so, stolen property is just one category out of 27 that determine a districts property crime report. Some of the categories are labeled under Crime Against Property and include counterfit/forgery, extortion, blackmail, Wire Fraud, Hacking (just to name a few).  Several categories in this list should be labeled under a different topic other than "crime against property" and/or be divided into separate categories like personal injury or physical property . 

So, who is lying to local DFW residents about crime rates being down- the data, council members, the mayor, DPD police- because the data is not adding up? 

No. There is no statistical or factual evidence that shows Ring deters crime in Dallas or in other cities in the United States. Locally in Mesquite, Texas- the MPD has made just one arrest since signing in September 2018 — for stealing an Amazon-delivered package containing an Echo Show smart speaker, and ironically the mounted Ring camera itself, spokesman Lt. Stephen Biggs made aware. Of the arrests that police connected to Ring, most were for low-level non-violent property crimes, according to interviews and police records reviewed by NBC. These arrests detailed the theft of a $13 book, the theft of a Nintendo Switch video game console (and several items, including two coffee mugs, purchased from the Home Shopping Network valued at $175. Circling back around closer to Dallas in Parker County, Texas, two people were arrested for allegedly stealing a dachshund named Rufus Junior, valued at $200- which also involved Animal Control (another department outside of Police partnership with Ring). Again, a clever work around for Ring to work with other city departments outside of the designated Police Partnership agreements. The graphs that compare Ring Density vs. Property Crime in Dallas Districts shows that Ring ownership prevents crime. More so, the graphs that show Safe Neighborhoods versus Dangerous Neighborhoods also reveal that Ring does not deter crime in these districts. 

More than ever, criminals are becoming even more daring by showing their faces on Ring cameras. One would think it would be a deterrent however, these criminals know that the Ring data collected will not get them caught. This is why crime is still on the rise regardless of Ring doorbells. Instead, Ring profits off of crime being committed to be used as a marketing incentive. Amazon uses this data  to sell more cameras by posting images of "criminals" as ads on Facebook without users consent. If this is happening, then we know that Police are not able to catch these criminals in the act via the Ring. Additionally, they do not have the manpower. Data and the constant stream of information from users is Amazon and the police departments top priority. The push to normalize a heightened surveillance state allows for the continued collection of data via surveillance methods. Specifically Ring users who upload content via the Neighbors app. Without the push of heightened criminal activity, Amazon could never partner with police to obtain this additional data. Their objective is for   you to be scared and for crime to be ever-present. Amazon does not care about the safety of users as seen from the exorbitant amount of security breaches with Ring doorbells and concern for users safety.  Specifically, the security and vulnerability issues from the device remains the same. Hackers continue to break security measures and the distribution of personal data continues to be breached.   Amazon has shown marginal attempts to resolve these internal issues. (Please visit the media section to view the video of a local Dallas Grand Prairie woman who had her Ring hacked and Amazon did nothing to protect her).As a result, this environment is making people feel less safe owning a Ring doorbell. 

Historically, crime rates that are reported reflect activity from police.  This means that certain neighborhoods with high  visitation by police will be shown as areas of danger and crime instead of communities that are targeted and excessively policed. This issue is seen in the data that DPD releases which includes a plethora of crimes to heighten fears and the racist political language of crime. Instead, in my  DPD crime graphs, I have organized the data around "most/least reported property loss" that tones down the freighted language of crime in these districts. If you look at these graphs, I only included four (4) major crime categories to determine a better micro vs. generalized consensus in various Dallas Districts. The city includes these filler categories to regulate the data that is collected per district. The repurposing of data allows for the following to occur: The push for opportunistic zones to gain more surveillance, spur more fundraising, re-gentrify, the allowance for additional funds or grants to be given to districts and council members, the promotion of crime data in good or bad light to boost City Officials and Police Chief decisions (ie implement more restrictions or allocate funds), the use of crime reports as a positive statistic to reinforce the Cities narrative (either good or bad) and lastly, the ability for police to form partnerships with third-parties like Amazon or surveillance companies. 

In the open data DPD expense report, I did uncover mass amounts of funds given to the DPD for surveillance in order to combat "crime" with third party connects. These large companies were hiding under various LLCs to go unnoticed. An example of this can be seen with surveillance app site iWatch Dallas. This app is a crime preventative portal for local residents to use and upload their content. DPD claims the owner of iWatch Dallas app is Steve Elliot however, the funds sheet for DPD show Zetesky Inc, LLC to be the originator for iWatch App . The vendor payments from DPD were made out to Zetesky for Software Purchase <$1000.  To be expected, the funds sheet did not reveal the actual amount spent, which is similar to the how DPD reveals crime property data as <100%+. Again, we need more transparency to factual data when it comes to how our tax payers money is being spent and how  data is being collected and used.

Additionally, when it comes to the data given to overall crime score in DFW- the data shows an interchanging of people and crimes in any given area. Lets take for example, DFW airport- millions of people pass through this hub making it a higher percentage crime score than the surrounding areas actual crime(as seen in the crime heat maps). So why does the city calculate crime scores in this manner? Again, is this a means to show that areas with less mobility/walkability, more rural, or higher demographics or income areas to be seen as safer than areas like Downtown, DFW Airport, or major transportation areas to help with the incentive of reducing crime in more densely populated areas? It seems odd to incorporate this data towards property crimes. Again, there needs to be additional transparency for the data collected and shared on DPD open portal. 

DPD has to fulfill the duty that they are doing their job to keep residents "safe". But are the police actually doing their job to keeping Dallas residents safe? For one, activists have also raised concerns that despite the plan, the city and police department have continued to increase funds for policing, and haven’t incorporated mechanisms to hold police accountable.“We don’t believe our city has funded oversight as much as they should,” said Dominique Alexander, president of the Next Generation Action Network, which advocates for police reform in the Dallas area. The city’s police budget, which is the largest of any Dallas department includes $612 million in more police funding compared to $567 million last year which raises property taxes by $132 million. This comes after Mayor Johnson denounced the city efforts to reallocate money away from police. And two, there continues to be a lack of trust, especially after the 2018 murder of Botham Jean — a Black man who was in his own apartment when an off-duty Dallas cop entered and shot him. 

The city of Dallas has received $4.5 million toward the Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson’s Task Force on The Safer Communities plan (under OIPSS) , including $3.7 million toward the two environmental strategies that did not involve police direct interaction via technology like surveillance cameras. In this new initiative, DPD has sliced Dallas into about 104,000 microgrids, each about the size of two football fields, allows the police department to direct their surveillance activity specifically to areas of 'high crime" without being overwhelming or omnipresent. The 47 to 50 grids that officers focus on account for about 10% of the city’s violent crime. The city believes that the exact location of hot spot zones could jeopardize their covert mission to get criminal caught on cameras- instead, this is just another way for the city to hide their plans and data from the public and implement 600 additional now, mobile surveillance cameras. The city can place these cameras at any location, at anytime and sadly, without any oversight or approval. There is no oversight to why cameras are being placed in certain locations and why funds are being used to implement surveillance. Moreover, residents don't have data that support the 600 additional cameras or data that show surveillance is needed in these "crime" ridden areas. Again, blurred information and skewed open portal DPD data.  This initiative started a year ago- however, local residents have yet to see that DPD can prove surveillance works.

It should be no surprise that Ring gave free devices to individual officers as well as entire departments from 2016 to January 2020. To make matters worse, the Ring doorbells were often in exchange for promoting the cameras and the Neighbors app.  For example, in San Antonio, Bexar county PD received a free Ring per every 20 Neighbor app downloads. The "Safer Dallas" initiative partnered with Amazon to raffle out Rings in return for free promotional recording. This helped  police expand Ring into areas that did have high ownership or lack of surveillance. Until June 2021, the company also provided a special Ring Portal that allowed police departments to access footage from Ring owners, even if they never posted that footage publicly. Since then, Neighbors has been coded to regulate the manner in which Police obtain data from Ring users by asking permission before extrapolating the video from the platform. However, Senator Markey has revealed that Amazon's partnerships with Police did not always ask Ring users first before collecting the data. In response, Amazon refuses to say how many Ring users had video footage obtained by police. Yet, in the Senator Markey report,  in 2022 eleven (11) times Amazon Ring provided video to police without the owner’s knowledge or consent or any search warrant signed by a judge, Amazon Ring did so pursuant to its own internal “emergency exception” as provided by the company.  The Amazon provision provides: Emergencies. Ring reserves the right to respond immediately to urgent law enforcement requests for information in cases involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person. Emergency disclosure requests must be submitted to emergency-le-requests@ring.com. Such requests must include “EMERGENCY” in the subject line and be accompanied by a completed emergency request form. In this company policy, Amazon Ring invites the police to get a Ring doorbell video directly from the company if its own criteria are met.  

As you can see from the graphs, the City of Dallas needs more eyes in the sky due to the drop in active officers and mistrust in the community. The city is specifically targeting areas where redistricting occurs, alleged "crime" is higher, minorities are the main demographic, and driven around poor or working class. The city has partnered with companies like Amazon as a means to collect more data where they are lacking and create more surveillance where they can not see. The partnerships with other departments like Fire, Human Resources, Community Development, Code Enforcement, Animal Control and so forth allows the city to use crime as a guise to collect and obtain additional data on people and communities that the police force is having trouble accumulating.  To get around certain loopholes, The city has strategically developed a new department called the Office of Integrated Public Safety Solutions (OIPSS) to attack crime in ways police partnerships with Amazon or various third parties have certain regulations put in place which can now be bypassed with new departments and new recruits. The city states that it will work with various city departments and outside agencies to mitigate circumstances that promote, encourage, or contribute to violent criminal activity within identified high risk areas of the city. The success of OIPSS will be initiated through surveillance tracking tools and dashboards. 

Adding to the development of OIPSS and various programs - The U.S. Department of Justice has awarded the city a $250,000 grant to fund the salaries of two Outreach and Advocacy Specialists who will form a Long-Term Care Crisis Intervention Team program for two years. The creation of Crisis Intervention Teams is a national initiative for local law enforcement to initiate community partnerships with county health services, mental health advocates, and mental health consumers to address the mental health needs of those who enter the judicial system during a crisis. This Long-Term Care CIT program serves as an alternative to traditional police involvement with mental health and social service issues. 

Furthermore, tapping into partnerships with Amazon Ring Police Departments under the Domestic Abuse pilot programs in Texas like San Antonio, Houston and now Dallas- Police Are Now Giving Amazon Ring Cameras to Survivors of Domestic Violence. Is this Helping? No, this is not helping. In fact, it is placing victims information and data at risk due to the privacy and safety concerns Amazon users are already experiencing. Not to mention, the constant connection and conflict of interest between police and abuse victims. Survivors say the approach ends up doing more harm than good. Erica Olsen, the director of the Safety Net project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, says video footage has another flaw: It’s rarely the “smoking gun” that one might expect. “We’ve seen some of these scenarios play out, where, even in the existence of video footage, there is a question about what happened,” she says. If “there’s no audio, [or] video started or stopped at a certain point, everything is questioned. If there is too much video and there is something in there that questions the character of the person, [that] should be irrelevant.” Domestic violence programs that rely on surveillance fall short from achieving results as cases are complex, and violations of a protective order does not always occur at home. 

All the domestic violence programs placed requirements on survivors who wanted to participate. In San Antonio, individuals must have first filed a relevant police report. In Cape Coral, a protective order was required, and anyone receiving a camera had to agree to hand over Ring footage to the police if asked, or risk losing the camera. Bexar County required “that the survivor be fully cooperative with law enforcement and the District Attorney’s office” in a  statement from the department’s public information office. That survivors are meant to share footage of incidents directly with police. This is clearly blurring the lines between police work, marketing/promotion and outside partnerships .  

To Note: Amazon Ring partnership states that no other partnership agreements with Ring- can be made other than police or fire departments on NPSS, despite their commitment to actively recruit public health departments, animal services, and agencies that primarily address homelessness, drug addiction, and mental health onto Ring’s platform?*  We already see Ring users tapping into various "departments" via the Neighbors app for lost animals, code enforcement, homelessness etc. - seems like Amazon is making it very easy for users to post across departments other than Police or Fire. The  Neighbors app is already streamlining the approach to branch into other city departments and is basically already doing so without consent. 

Local UTD Criminology Professor and Doctoral Student Andrew P. Wheeler and Sydney Reuter revealed in Redrawing Hot Spots of Crime in Dallas, Texas,  additional crime data was available (as seen with the open data provided by the Dallas PD in the various graphs), Dallas PD did undergo a transition to NIBRS reporting, which subsequently caused various anomalies in the open data (such as a dramatic drop in thefts). 

Activists are also concerned that the rosy picture painted by the city’s administration could come at the expense of public transparency. Over time, an online data portal tracking city police reports has been more and more heavily redacted, in a move that Police Chief Garcia argues shields victims’ privacy but that limits public understanding of where and how crimes are committed. The mayor and police chief try to make their own narrative. 

Resources like the city’s data portal are, “the only way that the public knows and is able to hold account.” However you read the data, Chief of Police Garcia acknowledges that one year’s worth isn’t enough to understand where a city is headed long-term. “This is not the panacea. This is a crime reduction strategy, not a crime elimination strategy,” Garcia said. 

Amazon continues to hide information/data that is used publicly - there has to be a regulated level of transparency from the data collected, stored and used regardless of public vs. private entities.  New legislation and bills need to be passed to regulate data collection and show how the data is collected, stored and disseminated. Senator Markey from Mass. has started the conversation with very concerning response from Amazon. See more information here: https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senator-markey-renews-investigation-into-amazon-rings-surveillance-practices-and-cooperation-with-police 

Ring cameras exemplify racial profiling, making people feel more paranoid, rather than more secure.  The constant alerts and beratement of "suspicious" activity and various alerts on the Neighbors app and device produce an unfiltered alarming fear of paranoia. Privacy activists also note that wading through the surveillance footage  Ring cameras send to Neighbors app, makes people believe there is more crime in their neighborhood than what is actually occurring. Criminals don't care if Ring is present, they will still commit the crime because police can not show up fast enough. So, if the local PD are not doing the job, than is Ring taking over the responsibility of Police? It seems as if Dallas PD are already aware of this transition allowing the technology to do the work for them within communities. Especially when new initiatives like OIPSS continue to fund surveillance products in lieu of police interaction. Again, no oversight on this plan - just massive amounts of funding and tax payers dollars being funneled to combat "crime" via new initiatives . 

Ring is normalizing a self surveillance state. Users tap into the normalization of surveillance by uploading content and surveilling people based upon their belief systems. The issue here remains much the same, there is no fact checking users, their beliefs, and the flagging of suspicious activity or people. Lewisville PD experienced this issue first hand. They had to strip the Ring user notifications  to another department within the police force. This was due  to the lack of oversight and reports made by users to Ring which alerted Police. According to Lewisville Police chief, the majority of crimes being reported were petty which diverted attention away from officers investigations into substantial crime. 

Coming from a security home camera company that prides itself in protecting home owners from criminals, you would think Amazons priority would be protecting users. This is not the case.  Amazon is not in the business to protect users as they claim to protect ones homes or belongings. The company does care about the data collected and marketing off of the data being collected. Amazon  also promotes the perpetuation of a surveillance state to sell more product and invent new product while normalizing surveillance and enacting fear of rampid crime.

*https://support.ring.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360054941551-Enabling-end-to-end-encryption-E2EE-in-the-Ring-app

Hackers have developed configs as a "High CPM," or high "check per minute," meaning it can test if a username and password allows access to a Ring camera quickly. In a different thread, one hacker is offering a Ring.com checker for $6.

The number of departments added last year (2021) was more than double the 703 brought on board in 2019, and an even bigger increase from the 40 back in 2018. The participating police agencies span across the United States, with the exclusion of only two states- Wyoming and Montana.

In 2020 — a year of unprecedented nationwide Black Lives Matter demonstrations against police brutality that resulted in the arrest of 10,000 (many non-violent) protestors — departments requested Ring footage for over 22,335 incidents. In fact, disclosures from Ring itself revealed that in 2020 law enforcement used these tactics to make 1,900 requests for data and footage users explicitly denied them access to.  Amazon, which ultimately gets to decide whether or not to comply with the cops' requests as seen in the emergency clause, did so 57 percent of the time last year. That's lower than the 68 percent of requests Amazon complied with in 2019, but also means very little when the number of forcible requests shot up by 150 percent in 2020. Worse still, an NBC report from February of last year found that there was very little evidence to suggest that Ring's partnership with police has even led to much crime-solving.  More forbidding, are the promotional deals Amazon has with Texas Police Departments that incentivizes police to push Ring users to post on the Neighbors app. In turn, more people create more value to the platform which is beneficial to the agency.  More users = more data. Additionally, Ring has announced that Amazon will continue to donate cameras to various departments based upon new users. This is why Police will continue to partner with Ring. 

So why even bother ramping up such a controversial program with so few tangible benefits? 

The answer is simple- it is for data, power and control. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/cute-videos-little-evidence-police-say-amazon-ring-isn-t-n1136026