I was recently made aware of the crime reporting feature on
the Ring.com neighborhood app, and I wanted to share some concerns.
It’s great when people have access to information quickly
and easily, but that only helps when the information is accurate. What is being
shared on this app is simply not.
When I compared the Ring weekly crime report to our own
records, I found several examples of incidents that were misreported. The
app was also showing reports of crimes of which we had no record. Curiously,
the app does not reveal its source for the information it is reporting.
There was also a recent alert about what the app called a
burglary in progress. It published this alert in the form of a news release
stating that Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office was responding to a burglary in
progress in Gulfport. The facts: Gulfport Police Officers responded to a call
where a person reported hearing his car alarm going off. When he went outside
to check it out, he saw someone walking away. Officers investigated and found
no evidence that the car had been burglarized, so they reclassified the call as
a suspicious person.
It is clear that the source for this alert was the Pinellas
County Sheriff’s Office “active calls” website. GPD uses PCSO for dispatch, so
our calls also appear on this website. If you go directly to the source and
follow it, you can see as calls are updated to reflect the most recent and
accurate information. Apparently the Ring app does not do this, which means a
lot of people are not getting the full story.
If you use this app, which I agree has a lot of great
potential, please don’t share or rely on the information without verifying the
most up to date data directly from the source.
For crime reports: http://egis.pinellascounty.org/apps/CrimeViewer/
For calls in progress: https://www.pcsoweb.com/activecallsdetails
Thank you.
