Ring declined to reveal how many police departments it is currently serving, but according to one police memo dated April 22, 2019, “over 225 law enforcement agencies” are engaged in partnerships with Ring, which was snatched up by Amazon in April last year. Through these contractual relationships, Ring grants police access to an online platform—or “portal”— which can be used to acquire video footage captured by Ring’s doorbell surveillance cameras. However, the footage can only be obtained with the permission of the device’s owner, who must also be a user of the company’s “neighborhood watch app,” called Neighbors. [...]

Because there are already thousands of Ring users in major cities across the U.S., one of Ring’s primary goals in its police partnerships is encouraging existing customers to download Neighbors. To ensure that police stay on message when promoting the app, or answering questions about it, Ring not only provides police departments with talking points but widely seeks to secure contracts that grant it the absolute right to approve all police statements about its services.

Contracts and other documents obtained from police departments in three states show that Ring pre-writes almost all of the messages shared by police across social media, and attempts to legally obligate police to give the company final say on all statements about its products, even those shared with the press. (In exchange, police are also given the ability to approve any Ring press releases that directly reference the partnering police agency.)