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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

This is an entirely inflammatory and baseless article.

Yes, you should care a bit about local crime. If someone in your neighborhood is stealing hubcabs, maybe it's a good idea to park in the garage. Likewise, if there's a spat of minor vehicle burglaries, it's probably wise to make sure your vehicle is locked.

Yeah, is some idiot going to theorize that the salesman who ignored their no soliciting sign a secret islamist infiltrator who is casing their house? Probably. That doesn't undo the value of the other things because silly people exist.

On the other hand, when there are bad things happening in your neighborhood like serious break-ins or joggers keep getting kidnapped, then you know, harass your local police department to step up patrols and act accordingly.

Crime as a whole lowering doesn't mean crime in your neighborhood isn't happening. Yes the world is getting more peaceful as a whole, but yes, you can still be mugged and killed.

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I don't think the article's thesis is that people shouldn't care about local crime news. Its main concern seems to be that a company who directly benefits from people being fearful (justifiably or not) of neighborhood crime, is also getting into the business of disseminating crime news, something which is known to increase people's fear of crime. The author points out that news organizations have traditionally been saturated with crime news, because of its popularity with readers, and that this might contribute to the public's skewed perception of actual crime incidence and trends.

Obviously, Amazon is not just a traditional news publisher, and may end up bringing innovation and doing things much better than journalists ever did. But there has been reason to believe big tech can end up being blindsided and/or fail when trying to disrupt traditional domains and problems.

My house was broken into last year. I wish I had Ring then. We never found any leads and police were unable to do anything.

Since then I have gotten Ring and definitely feel more secure. We even found footage of a man stealing our mail and were able to confirm with Ring app footage from a neighbor that the man stealing the mail was the same stealing their mail.

> My house was broken into last year. I wish I had Ring then. We never found any leads and police were unable to do anything.

> Since then I have gotten Ring and definitely feel more secure. We even found footage of a man stealing our mail and were able to confirm with Ring app footage from a neighbor that the man stealing the mail was the same stealing their mail.

In that case was, the culprit ever apprehended?

As a victim of package theft, I’m going to say, no.

Even with a picture of a car, and a decent photo of a face, there’s not much that can be done. You need a license plate. There’s no way to identify these people.

Nope! Which perhaps you could argue makes it not worthwhile if it couldn't help accomplish that.

However, some in our household were worried being targeted because of our position or industry. However, the security camera showed it was a homeless person stealing the mail of everyone on the street which (although annoying) was nice info.

My experience is that giving all the camera footage in the world will make little difference to a home robbery investigation, hopefully other's mileage is better.

All of the people I know with Nest/Ring/Arlo/whatever who have been unlucky enough to suffer a break-in have found the thieves frankly don't care about the obvious presence of the cameras and neither did the cops care all that much for the footage.

I like these smart cam products for spying on if my Amazon parcel has arrived, or what my kids might be up to in the yard. For crime _prevention_, I don't especially rate these things personally.

> My house was broken into last year. I wish I had Ring then.

Wouldn't it be more useful, not to mention less prone to falsely inflaming your fear and still being respectful of your fellow man, to put security cameras and motion detectors inside your home instead?

We have that as well - but the Ring was by far the cheapest of these and the most seamless to install.

By then it's a bit too late no? Sure you might be able to use it to arrest them, but they've already gotten inside your house and done whatever it is they plan to do - whether that's simply take your stuff, or harm your family.

I don't see how an external camera changes that, really. By the time you've been notified, called the cops, and the cops arrive, the intruders will almost certainly be gone anyway.

And what happened with the man stealing the mail ? My father had video footage of someone stealing and the police couldn’t be bothered to find the person I wonder if something came of your footage

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