AKRON, Ohio — This week, the Akron Police Department is promoting a new program where consenting residences and businesses can register their security cameras with the city of Akron to help officers investigate crimes more efficiently.
The aim with the Connect Akron program is to make the city safer.
Akron Police Department Captain David Laughlin said for the past year they've been piloting the new technology and letting it spread by word of mouth. Starting this week, they actively promoting it.
Working with a tech company called Fusus, there are two levels to the Connect Akron program.
With the first level, residents and businesses can simply register their security camera and an Akron police investigator will contact them if they need their camera to assist in solving a crime near them.
The second level of Connect Akron integrates the camera into the Akron Police Department's Fusus system so that they have direct access to the live camera feed.
"Back in the day, a detective would put out a piece of paper with a grainy photo and it's like, 'hey, does anybody know this person?' And then it would just be luck of the draw," Laughlin said. "It could be days, weeks, months, or never that we'd be able to figure out who those folks are. By using Fusus, we can drill down and investigators can really do the legwork themselves and try to pull bits and pieces together. It will aid us in apprehending people a lot quicker and solving more crimes in our community."
As of early Tuesday evening, 3,623 cameras have been registered at level one and 281 cameras have been integrated at level two.
We asked Laughlin what the goal is for the year now that they are actively promoting the program.
“I would be thrilled doubling that number," he said. "That would be incredible, just seeing the possibilities of what this can do for our community. It shows to me the collaborative effort within our community, the partnerships, the trust. There's a lot more to it than just having cameras. It just shows that we are collectively wanting safety. If we can get to double that number, I would be ecstatic.”
When Akron police posted about the program on social media Monday, there were some people commenting that they don't trust police having access to their cameras.
“I can appreciate people's apprehension for that, but what they need to also recognize is that we have to be engaged in crime fighting together," Laughlin said when asked about community skepticism. "It's an opportunity for the businesses and their community to share with us what's already being captured that we would still get via the investigation, whether it's a search warrant or voluntarily giving it to us. What it's doing is giving us that information quicker and so our investigators can act sooner to apprehend the people who have committed crimes and victimized our community. And that's ultimately what we all want as a community, as a police department. Get the people who are victimizing our community off the streets as quickly as possible to face justice so they cannot victimize anybody else. I don't think there's anybody in our community that would disagree that getting offenders off of our streets for a safer Akron is a wrong thing to do."
Laughlin stressed that the Akron Police Department will never manipulate or alter cameras that sign up, and that they will only access them in the event of a crime or emergency near the camera's location.
He also noted that with Ring doorbells, police will not integrate the camera's live feed because of recent changes in Ring policy, but Ring owners can still register their cameras and volunteer over any footage they want.
Anyone who's interested in registering or integrating their cameras can click here.