It was about 4:30 on a Tuesday morning when a Portland man got an alert from his Ring Video Doorbell Pro. After seeing a stranger trying to steal a bag from his porch, instinct kicked in, and the homeowner ran out the door and chased the thief down the street.
“Hey! Get out of here right now,” he screamed. “Call the police!”
This was the scene on a typically quiet street in Northeast Portland, where neighbours awoke in the early morning to calls for help in the tight-knit community of Grant Park.
“I woke up because I heard some shouting,” said Maran Sheils, a homeowner from down the street.
As neighbours gathered to see what the commotion was all about, they found another person lurking in the neighbourhood. This time, it was a woman, who police say was inside a homeowner’s car a few houses down when she was confronted by Maran and her neighbours.
“The woman lurking there said, ‘I’m just here to see my aunt,’” Maran told KATU News. “It was very obvious that she wasn’t here to see her aunt because […] we knew that her aunt didn’t live there.”
Maran says Portland police caught the woman with stolen property from the homeowner’s car, but police were unable to confirm that she had been arrested.
As for the man who was chased down the street, he escaped, but police say he dropped his own personal bag in the process. They’re now confident that they can use the bag and the video footage from Ring to track down the suspect and put him behind bars.
The man who chased the suspect off his porch asked to remain anonymous, but he told KATU News that it was just a spur-of-moment reaction. He said that becoming a vigilante to stop this kind of crime isn’t worth it, and we at Ring agree. But what is worth it, he says, is a Ring Video Doorbell to watch over your home.
Other Grant Park residents are understandably concerned about the thefts, but they say that finding suspicious people lurking in the neighbourhood isn’t exactly uncommon—and neither is the neighbourhood coming together to help each other out.
“We all know everyone,” Maran said, and that close-knit relationship is what helps keep their community safe: “I’m talking about neighbours taking care of neighbours.”
Here at Ring, we take pride in helping communities come together to fight against local crime. Our partnership with the LAPD proved that, when neighbours rally around Ring Video Doorbells, we can all help reduce crime in local neighbourhoods, and Grant Park and scores of similar stories show how we can all contribute to safer communities around the world.