A video showing Pittsburgh police officers disabling a residence's doorbell camera spread across social media this week, but officers say the clip leaves out why they were there in the first place: a woman who told 911 she had not left her bedroom for three days, afraid her roommate would make good on a threat to shoot her.
Pittsburgh Police addressed the viral footage directly in a statement, saying the video being circulated lacks any context as to why officers were at the residence or their reason for disabling the camera, according to a post from Pittsburgh Police
The clip shows officers disabling the camera, but not the circumstances that led them to the residence.
That context, as laid out by WTAE, begins with Zone 6 officers being called to a reported threat in progress on Wymore Street on a Saturday afternoon. Dispatchers had relayed that a woman was texting 911 to say her roommate was threatening to shoot her, and that she had not left her bedroom for three days out of fear of him, the station reports.
Officers Feared the Roommate Was Still Inside, Watching
When officers arrived, they spotted a doorbell camera mounted on the house and grew concerned that the roommate might still have been inside, armed, and watching their movements through the device, per the same account. They temporarily removed the camera's battery to disable it.
Officers then communicated with the woman through an open window rather than risk the front entrance. She told officers she did not know where her roommate was and was afraid to leave her room, the report notes. Officers got her safely out of the home and conducted a protective sweep of the residence, but did not find the roommate inside.
Once the scene was determined to be safe, officers replaced the doorbell camera's battery, restoring it to working order, the station reports. Police said the roommate had an active warrant tied to a previous terroristic-threats incident, though there are no new charges against him at this time.
Why Police Worry About Doorbell Cameras on Calls Like This
The tension between home security cameras and officer safety isn't new. The FBI warned in 2019 of officer-safety issues posed by doorbell cameras, including the risk that the devices could alert a suspect to police presence before officers are ready to act, according to Police1. One case cited by the outlet described a suspect who was not even on the premises remotely watching officers serve a search warrant through a doorbell camera and alerting neighbors and a landlord to their presence.
By February 2021, 84% of Police1 readers polled said they were regularly encountering doorbell cameras in their jurisdictions, and the outlet reported that departments had requested footage from Ring cameras for more than 22,000 incidents in the prior year. The Washington Post separately reported that police forces across the country made more than 20,000 requests that year for footage from Ring doorbells and other home-security cameras.
Doorbell camera encounters with police have occasionally cut the other way, too. In one case reported by Yahoo News, North Carolina resident Uniqua Teel shared Ring footage showing Greenville police entering her home and detaining her after officers responding to reports of shots fired into a nearby apartment knocked on her door. Footage in that case captured an officer threatening to remove her camera, warning, “Otherwise, I'm ripping it off the wall, writing a search warrant, and I'm gonna keep you up all night.”
What Pennsylvania Law Says About the Alleged Threat
Pennsylvania's terroristic-threats statute covers communicating a threat to commit a crime of violence with intent to terrorize another person, according to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. The offense is generally graded as a first-degree misdemeanor, though it can rise to a third-degree felony if the threat causes occupants to be diverted from their normal routines. It remains unclear whether any new charges will stem from the Wymore Street incident beyond the roommate's existing warrant.
