In May, police in Hammond, Indiana, got a suspicious-person alert from a concerned resident. She could see a man, she told officers, through her Ring smart doorbell.

The resident had already sent police another message, along with footage from her internet-connected video doorbell, about an earlier incident. Now the resident was even more frightened, having watched a new incident unfold on her phone through a live feed from her Ring app.

She sent police the video recorded from the doorbell. Police immediately knew the man wasn’t a criminal.

“It was one of our detectives. He was going there to interview the person for whatever the situation was,” said Steve Kellogg, a public information officer for Hammond Police, adding that the cop was wearing plain clothes but had a badge around his neck. The badge was out of the Ring camera’s line of sight, but the resident would have spotted it immediately had she gone to the door, the officer added.

“He’s clearly on the camera saying he’s with the police department,” Kellogg said…

At 12:50 a.m. June 17, the sound of gunshots rips through a neighborhood in northern Columbia.

A sensor relay picks up the sound waves, triangulating their origin — 5118-2 Mauldin Ave. Alerts are sent to officers, who converge on the scene, according to a police report. They recover seven shell casings from a .22-caliber firearm. No one is injured or arrested, and no firearm is found at the scene.

Columbia’s leaders are pointing to calls like this as key parts in a policing strategy designed to make the city safer and reforge bonds of trust with the community…

A Major Police Body Cam Company Just Banned Facial Recognition. Its Ethics Board Says the Technology is Not Reliable Enough to Justify Using…

Tinted windows and hydraulic lowriders are so … 1990s.

One of the latest trends in custom car modifications goes way beyond style —and some say it could cause a dangerous panic among pedestrians.

The modification usually involves removing portions of a car’s exhaust system and “tuning” the computer that regulates a car’s fuel combustion to produce loud pops and flashes that fire like gunshots out of the vehicle’s tailpipe. On social media sites like Instagram, the I-Team found dozens of videos demonstrating straight pipe exhaust systems that have been altered using techniques called “straight piping” and “two-step” modifications.

Pedestrians said they could imagine a dangerous mass panic if one of the customized cars rolled past a crowded street.

“I’d freak out,” said Linda Marullo, a New Yorker walking through Times Square.

Teresa Leung, a Canadian visiting New York, watched the Instagram videos in disbelief…

If you’re walking in Bloomfield, New Jersey, there’s a good chance you’re being recorded. But it’s not a corporate office or warehouse security camera capturing the footage — it’s likely a Ring doorbell made by Amazon .

While residential neighborhoods aren’t usually lined with security cameras , the smart doorbell’s popularity has essentially created private surveillance networks powered by Amazon and promoted by police departments.

Police departments across the country, from major cities like Houston to towns with fewer than 30,000 people, have offered free or discounted Ring doorbells to citizens, sometimes using taxpayer funds to pay for Amazon’s products. While Ring owners are supposed to have a choice on providing police footage, in some giveaways, police require recipients to turn over footage when requested.

Ring said Tuesday that it would start cracking down on those strings attached…

Christina Wilcox hears the blast of gunfire echo through her Shawnee neighborhood a few times a week.

She’s learned to quickly assess the threat: Are her kids safe? Doors locked? Should she drop to the ground?

Not a consideration: calling the police.

“I don’t do nothing wrong and I’m going to keep it like that,” she said. “I don’t want them coming to my door and someone down the street sees and thinks I’m saying something.”

This unwillingness to alert police to shootings is not uncommon, and police know it. That’s why in 2017 the Louisville Metro Police Department installed ShotSpotter, an array of microphones across six square miles of the city designed to listen for gunfire and automatically notify officers.

But a Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting analysis of police data shows the system provides no guarantee police will stay on the scene very long — or actually investigate.

Officers conduct required surveys of the area on fewer than two out of every 10 ShotSpotter calls, according to data from the police department and the city’s MetroSafe 911 service. The calls rarely lead to an arrest.

The officers typically clear scenes within minutes, and they seldom find evidence of a shooting, according to police data.

As Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer looks to free up $35 million to pay for the city’s growing pension obligation, he is threatening to get rid of ShotSpotter. The service costs $390,000 for technical assistance, system maintenance and data storage, according to the city’s contract with the San Francisco-based company. To date, the city has paid more than $1.2 million for the service.

Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad said recently that, combined with other proposed police cuts, losing ShotSpotter would cause “bleeding” and contribute to a “slow train wreck” for public safety in Louisville.

LMPD spokesperson Jessie Halladay said the arrests ShotSpotter brings are a crime deterrent and a lot of the gunshots it alerts police to aren’t reported. She speculated that more officers probably do surveys than the data shows, but they forget to report them.

But some experts question whether the lack of tangible benefits make the service worth the cost…