Amazon's Ring security cameras are moving deeper into law enforcement work in a new deal with Flock Safety that will allow citizens who own Ring cameras to share footage that can assist in crime investigations, making the video available to law enforcement that use Flock's software.
It's the second recent deal bringing the Amazon Ring security tech into the law enforcement market in new ways, with Ring also recently announcing a similar effort with Axon Enterprise .
Flock, a direct Axon competitor, works with an estimated 6,000 communities and 5,000 law enforcement agencies, and sees a "long tail" for the tech 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 ranked No. 7 on the 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50 list.
The Ring Community Requests feature will be available for use with the FlockOS and Flock Nova platforms that are contracted by local public safety agencies. That will enable law enforcement officers to directly request video evidence from Ring cameras, but citizens will make the decision whether to share video. Police requests will go into what is called the Ring Neighbors feed, which pings camera users within an area identified as relevant to the crime, and camera owners can then share video, which is kept in a secure environment and can only be used for the single crime investigation.
"For me, it is clear and obvious we have a crime problem in America," Langley said. "We are focused on businesses and cities, and Ring is definitely a leader in home security. Being able to partner with them will lead to much safer communities, and doing it in a way that allows the public to opt in," he said, adding that it was Ring that first reached out to Flock Safety about a potential deal.
The law enforcement technology market, and surveillance cameras in particular, are by their nature controversial, with concerns about privacy, racial profiling and weak security protocols, and this is not the first attempt by Ring to more broadly distribute video footage. A previous incarnation of this type of technology, Ring Request for Assistance, was shut down in 2024. According to Consumer Reports, that tool was used by at least 2,500 police agencies. Ring has also worked directly with law enforcement in the past to distribute cameras in communities.
Langley said there is a key difference between 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, while the request goes out in the Ring app, any footage shared by users goes into the Flock platform, which is fully secure," he said. "This is what we do every day for businesses and municipalities," he added. Flock has contracts with an estimated 1,000 private sector organizations for its technology.
While Ring does not release precise data on the number of cameras in use, Langley said it is a major advantage to law enforcement to have this option in crime investigations, and law agencies have been asking for it, given the fact that there can be tens of thousands of Ring cameras in communities across the country.