By james art RENO, Nev. (News 4 & Fox 11) – The Reno Police Department is asking residents and businesses to register their cameras through the RPD website.
Police say the camera registration program should help law enforcement investigate crimes more quickly.
There are different levels for registering external cameras. You can either send a live feed of your cameras to the police department, give RPD access to the footage only, or indicate the location of the camera and the direction it is pointing.
The purpose of registering your camera is to have a map of where all the cameras are located in the city so that law enforcement can start investigating crimes sooner.
“For a random example, a crime happens somewhere downtown and we can pull up a map, we can see where all the different cameras are downtown and the direction they’re pointing, and so we have a time stamp of when someone calls the police and after then we can overlay that with dash cam footage to see if this crime was actually caught on camera,” said Reno Police Department Public Information Officer Christopher Johnson.
This is a new twist in the way police have been accessing people’s cameras. Previously, they had to request the record after a crime was committed or even get a warrant.
Some businesses are hesitant to hand over full access to their cameras to the police.
“I think we would definitely consider, you know, on-demand access and enrollment for that program. Let them know we have a camera,” said Ryan Goldhammer, owner of Noble Pie in Midtown.
The Reno Police Department tells us that it costs nothing to register your camera and they will not share your cameras with anyone.
Click here to register your camera with RPD.