The Granite Quarry-Faith Police Department is now a part of the Neighbors by Ring program, which is a platform that allows people who own Ring home security cameras on their doors to share videos they’ve captured to surrounding neighbors.

You don’t have to own a Ring camera to sign up for the app, but you can view video footage that owners of the camera have shared on the platform. It is a free app for iPhone and Android users to download.

“The app is a community platform where you can pass information between neighbor and neighbor and you can put up alerts,” Granite Quarry investigator Todd Taylor explained. “(Users) would have the ability to share the videos directly with law enforcement.”

The police department will also use the platform to send out alerts and public safety messages such as the “9 p.m. routine.” This will just be a reminder sent out at that time to those on the platform to “remember to take your valuable out of your car, lock your car doors, lock your house and turn an outside light on,” Taylor said.

The platform allows for   alerts to go to the entire Granite Quarry and Faith communities, but it can also be used to send more specific alerts to certain neighborhoods.

“Say you have a child that goes missing, we can push out an alert to everybody in that area or that jurisdiction and ask if they will please check their cameras between this time and this time and see if you saw a child wandering around your neighborhood,” Taylor said.

If someone did see the child, they would have to share their video with the department on the platform.

Taylor made sure to emphasize that the police department isn’t able to look at a homeowners’ Ring cameras. They can only look at videos that have been shared to the platform.

“I can’t go on there and just look at what your cameras doing. I don’t have access to that,” Taylor said. “You have to share that data with us. … It’s a networking platform that allows the community to share with a police department and give us updates.”

An example Taylor gave is of one resident who shared video footage caught on a Ring camera of a person who came up to her porch and then left. The resident wanted to get the footage out because they thought it was a suspicious person and wanted to notify the police department to be on the lookout.

“If they share it on the platform, not only do the neighbors get notified to  look out, the police department does too,” Taylor said. “It’s a quick way to say, ‘Hey, I know this isn’t a crime, but just wanted you to be aware that this person is roaming around at night.’ ”

The platform also doesn’t have to be used just to notify others about crime. It can also be used if there is a missing animal in the neighborhood or a sighting of a coyote.

The police department decided to sign up for the app after a string of local vehicle break-ins that occurred in Granite Quarry. A local resident shared footage they captured from the Ring camera and asked if the department had signed up for the app.

Taylor took a training class for the app on Jan. 23 and is in the process of learning more of the services and letting residents know they can sign up. He sent out a message Monday and shared on Facebook to let people know they are on the platform.