Know what's happening in your neighbourhood
Patrol connects verified residents with the people who actually live around them — about 2km, not a whole postal district — so you hear about a break-in on the next road, a missing dog, or a car being tried from the neighbours it happened to, not from a rumour three weeks later.
Check your area first
See how many neighbours are already on Patrol where you live — before you give us anything. No account, no email.
- Verified members, placed on their own street — not a whole postal district
- Your location is rounded to ~100m and never shown to anyone
- Free, with nothing on sale and no card
Patrol is not an emergency service and is not the Gardaí. In an emergency ring 999 or 112.
Useful, specific, and deliberately unexciting
A good local alert tells you what happened, roughly where, roughly when, and what to do about it. It does not name a person, show a registration plate, or shout. Patrol's report form is built to produce the first kind and refuse the second.
Every alert is labelled as a community report — one neighbour's account of what they saw. Patrol does not verify reports and does not present them as anything official.
How reports are moderated →Four steps, and the fourth is the one that matters
Enter your Eircode, then tap your road
The Eircode gives us your town. Tapping the map narrows it to your actual streets — we round what you tap to about 100 metres, and never ask for an address.
Create your account
Name, email, password. That's the whole form. You confirm your email before you can post anything, which is what stops a stranger reporting a burglary in your estate.
See your area
Alerts from within about 2km of you — roughly a twenty-minute walk — and a plain statement of how many neighbours are on Patrol inside that.
Bring your neighbours
One message to the estate group. This is not a favour to us — an alert reaches the people signed up nearby, so a street with nobody on it stays silent no matter how good the software is.
- Someone posts
- Neighbours who get it
- Too far — same town, not their street
Which is why it needs about 10 households
Patrol has no cameras, no sensors and nobody watching anything — the only thing that makes it work is the people on it. Post where one person is signed up and you have written to yourself.
Read the full walkthrough →What other people can see about you
A safety product that is vague about this does not deserve your address. The short version, in full:
Never your address
Patrol never asks for an address. You tap roughly where you live and we round it to about 100 metres before storing it, so the database holds a stretch of road rather than a building — and it is never shown to anyone.
A name, not a profile
Neighbours see your first name and last initial on anything you post. There is no member directory, no way to browse who is signed up near you, and no way to message a stranger out of the blue.
Nothing public
Alerts are visible only to verified members inside the area. There is no public feed, nothing is indexed by Google, and logged-out visitors — including this page — see no real reports at all.
No naming, no accusations
Reports that name a person, show a plate or accuse an individual are removed. Patrol is for describing what happened, not for identifying who you think did it.
Report and block
Any alert can be reported to us in one tap from the app, with a reason. Repeat false reporting and harassment cost the account.
Leave completely
Delete your account from your own dashboard whenever you like. Your account and your posts are removed from the database, not archived.
Bring your whole estate at once
Patrol works from the first day for an area that arrives together. If you run a residents' association, an estate committee or an existing neighbourhood watch, you already have the hard part: a list of households and a way to reach them.
We'll help you get the area over the line — an invite link for your group, a short explainer you can circulate, and a straight answer about what the platform does and doesn't do before you put your name to it.
What a group gets today
- A shared invite link that credits joins to your group
- Every member Eircode-placed in your area, with no manual approval to run
- Structured alerts instead of a scrolling chat nobody can search
- A written answer on privacy you can circulate before asking anyone to join
Being straight about it: moderation tools for group coordinators are not built yet. Today, content reports come to us and we act on them. We'd rather say that than have a committee discover it after recommending Patrol to fifty households.
The things people ask before joining
Is Patrol free?
Yes — completely, with no card and no paid tier. There is nothing on sale on this site today. If that ever changes, the change will be announced rather than discovered.
Why do you need my Eircode, and why the map?
The Eircode tells us your town or postal district — we read only the first three characters, and the four that identify your specific house are never used to locate you.
But a postal district is not a neighbourhood. A Dublin postal district runs to tens of thousands of households, and a safety feed covering all of it is a local newspaper. So after the Eircode we ask you to tap roughly where you live, and your alerts come from about 2km around that point instead.
Eircode itself can't narrow it: the characters after the routing key are deliberately randomised, precisely so location can't be inferred from them. Asking you is the only way that doesn't involve buying a copy of the national address database.
Can other members see where I live?
No. Patrol never asks for an address and never stores one. The point you tap is rounded to about 100 metres before it is saved — so what exists in the database is a stretch of road, not a house — and it is never shown to another member. Alerts carry the area you describe in your own words, plus a first name and last initial.
Is Patrol connected to An Garda Síochána?
No. Patrol is independent, has no Garda relationship, and posting here does not report anything to anybody official. Report crime to your local Garda station, or the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111.
What should I do in an emergency?
Ring 999 or 112. Patrol is not monitored — nobody is reading it on your behalf, at any hour. It is for telling neighbours things after the fact, not for getting help now.
Can I stay anonymous?
Not to your neighbours. Alerts carry your first name and last initial, because a neighbourhood watch where anyone can post anything unattributed becomes a rumour mill very quickly. You are anonymous to the public internet: nothing you post is visible without a verified account in the area.
What can I not post?
Names, addresses, registration plates, photos of identifiable people, or accusations against an individual. Report what you saw, not who you think did it. Reports that identify or accuse a person are removed, and the account that posted them can be removed too.
Can I delete my account?
Yes, from your dashboard, in two clicks, without emailing anyone. Your account and everything you posted are deleted from the database — not hidden, not deactivated.
How is this different from our estate WhatsApp group?
WhatsApp is better for conversation, and if your group is working, keep it. Patrol does the parts a group chat is bad at: everyone in the area is reachable without knowing them or having their number, reports have a consistent shape you can act on, and a message from three months ago is still findable.
Plenty of areas will sensibly use both.
More on the full FAQ, or email hello@patrol.ie and a person will answer.
Your neighbourhood works better when it's connected
Check your area and join if it's useful. And whether or not you join today, send it to the people on your road — that is how every area on Patrol that works got there.
Ten doors is a neighbourhood watch
An alert reaches the people signed up nearby, so one person on a road reaches nobody. It starts being useful at around 10 households — which is one message to a group you're already in, not a campaign.
What to do next
Picked for what you just worked out — not a list of everything we make.