How smart doorbells became the latest weapon in fighting crime
They may not look especially high tech but, last week, smart doorbells again proved their potential for solving serious crimes. Footage from a doorbell in Fitzwarren, Somerset, was crucial to the murder conviction of Collin Reeves, sentenced to a minimum of 38 years in prison last Tuesday for killing his neighbours Jennifer and Stephen Chapple.
The Reeves case is just the latest example of how evidence acquired via a smart doorbell is becoming as crucial to the police as DNA and phone data-tracing.
“The reach of digital evidence is massive,” says Dave Tucker, faculty lead at the national College of Policing. Smart doorbells are “a potential source of evidence,” he adds, “quite similar to CCTV.”
They are becoming so ubiquitous – and so potentially useful – that a digital intelligence training module called Operation Modify has been introduced to teach bobbies how to harness the footage for a conviction.
Even a few years ago, “we wouldn’t have thought about digital doorbells”, Tucker admits. But, in the 18 months since this form of digital intelligence was added to the curriculum, the force has become “very proud of it”.
Smart doorbells could be the game-changer police need, given recent clear-up rates: last week, it emerged that in police failed to solve a single burglary in nearly half of Britain’s neighbourhoods over the past three years.
Could that rate be overhauled given that one in five of us now owns a smart doorbell?
There is no doubting their increasing popularity. Ring, the market leader, was sold to Amazon in 2018 for more than £800 million. Its doorbells cost £89.99 (compared with upwards of £129.99 for a Google Nest), with subscription plans setting users back an extra £2.50 or £8 per month, depending on whether you go for a basic or premium plan.
Both options save video data for 30 days and the footage can be tracked via a smartphone app and shared – whether with an unsuspecting family member at home, or, in the event of a crime, with the police.
“We routinely ask people to check any video doorbell recordings in cases where incidents have taken place nearby, as it could be helpful for an investigation,” says Supt Dan Ivey, head of neighbourhood policing for the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. Doorbell footage helped to convict PC Wayne Couzens of the murder of Sarah Everard in 2021, connecting that sighting with bus dashcam footage and street CCTV to piece together her last moments.
Of course, most footage is not of such serious crimes. On neighbourhood apps such as NextDoor, posts featuring local rogues plucking Amazon packages from porches or making off with Oddboxes are common. Neighbours appeal for others on their street to share footage of car thefts, people making lewd remarks and dodgy tradesmen touting their wares.
“The bell makes us feel safer,” says Rae Radford, a social media consultant from London. She had hers installed after someone broke into her house while she was upstairs, “and without any video evidence the police couldn’t help us”. Its presence affords peace of mind and she’s noticing more of them on her street. Even where no crime has been committed, they have their uses: one woman reports installing a device for her elderly mother, who is fearful of answering the door, in order to vet visitors via footage streamed to the smartphone app.
There are concerns around privacy. Last year, a judge ruled that a Ring doorbell had “unjustifiably invaded” the privacy of a doctor in Oxford, whose neighbour, Jon Woodward, had his devices trained on her home. Woodward received a fine of £100,000 for breaking data laws and contributing to harassment. More broadly, this front-door footage army is accused of adding to a surveillance state that already sees one camera per 14 people in the UK. With five million lining the streets – more than any other European country per capita – the average London resident is said to be captured on CCTV around 300 times a day.
There could be another downside to the doorbells. Researchers at Cranfield University last year suggested that, rather than protecting owners, they serve as “affluence cues”, signalling to would-be burglars that wealth lies inside. There have been hacks, too, with criminals intercepting them in order to access personal data and even take control of the material being streamed to owners’ phones.
Unlike traditional burglar alarms, unusual activity doesn’t trigger an automatic police response. Ring’s own research said burglaries dropped by 50 per cent among those with the device, but police forces are yet to echo such findings.
Tucker says smart doorbell footage will never be the solitary smoking gun used to convict, functioning as one of many pieces of evidence required. But they are certainly giving a new meaning to Neighbourhood Watch.
