MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Memphis Police Department (MPD) is calling on residents to help decrease crime without the help of a camera feature.
This comes after the Amazon-owned company, Ring, ended its “Request for Assistance” tool. The feature allowed police departments to request and receive video from doorbell cameras.
In Memphis, many incidents are caught on camera. Some are caught on MPD SkyCop cameras, others are caught on at-home cameras.
“It’s more to catch an incident than to prevent it,” resident Kobe Glover said.
Glover didn’t have a camera until someone gave him a reason to get one.
“I’ve actually had an incident where someone pulled on my doorhandle while everybody in my house was asleep and I was awake,” Glover said. “So, I was like 'Okay, time for us to get a camera outside just so we know what’s going on when we’re here, when we’re not here.'”
Whether you have an at-home camera or you’re a business owner with cameras, you might be able to be part of the crime solution with MPD’s Connect 2 Memphis program.
“Hopefully it’s used and it’s just another tool to combat crime,” business-owner Jacke Steiner said.
Connect 2 Memphis has two options. Neighbors can share contact information with MPD so the department can call if there’s a crime in the area and see if anything was caught on camera. This is something thousands of neighbors are on board with.
“I’d be willing to give them my information in case anything does happen and they need the footage,” Glover said.
Another option is encouraged for businesses exterior cameras, but residents can do it too. It’s to integrate your video feed to MPD’s monitoring system, allowing them direct access.
“The ability to connect to your cameras and use the footage should there be an incident in your area - I am open to it,” Steiner said.
It takes about 60 seconds to share your information, but a bit more time to integrate your camera.
The program already has more than 5,000 registered cameras and more than 760 integrated cameras.
If you're interested in either option, you can find more information here.
ABC24 reached out to Memphis Police to see how many crimes they've been able to solve with the help of the cameras. They are working to find the numbers. We'll update you once we learn more.