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by asdfasgasdgasdg 2382 days ago
> If you reject both, it will only result in more innocent people getting hurt or killed and crimes going unsolved.

Please cite some evidence that doorbell cameras have a causal impact on crime rates. Or guns for that matter. I doubt there's anything compelling. There's probably a small marginal effect, but there are bigger levers we can turn. The way to actually help people not get hurt is to make it so that fewer people want to do crime. (Which, BTW, we've been doing a pretty bang up job of the last thirty to forty years! Good news!)

2 comments

Anecdote here:

There were increasing reports of burglaries in my neighborhood and one night my home was broken into while we were there sleeping. I installed a Ring camera the next weekend and was awakened to the world of my little cul-de-sac on an average night. There were generally multiple cars coming in, looping around, and leaving in the early-a.m. hours. But it lights up bright and immediately whenever someone comes back there, and in a matter of about two weeks, this dwindled down to absolutely no traffic. Now if I see an entry at 2:00am in my log, it's almost certainly an opossum video.

That's an nearly impossible metric to pin down. You'd have to ask criminals who would have done something in specific instances whether the cameras dissuaded them from doing it. Good luck with that.

What I can tell you is our cameras have assisted both us and police (via my consent) to identify a group of individuals who were breaking into cars in our neighborhood. Word will eventually get around that my neighborhood has cameras and people who are watching. That's a powerful deterrent.