Magic bullets

ShotSpotter says that its gunshot-detection technology reduces gun violence and saves lives.

But critics of the California-based company say it’s an expensive proposition that does little if anything to fight crime.

The Springfield City Council on Tuesday is set to consider an ordinance that would pay ShotSpotter nearly $840,000 over three years to operate company-owned monitoring equipment that would send instant alerts to officers when gunfire is detected in a 4.25 square mile area, mainly on the city’s east side. Memorial Medical Center and HSHS St. John’s Hospital had agreed to pay as much as $100,000 per year to help cover costs, but neither has committed in writing. Police chief Kenny Winslow last week praised ShotSpotter but  told aldermen that he can’t guarantee that private money is still available in light of economic downturns caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The chief also told the city council that police tally about 200 confirmed shots-fired incidents each year.

The ShotSpotter system relies on acoustic sensors that detect gunshots and triangulate so that police know, within 25 meters, where a shot was fired. The system also differentiates between guns so that police know whether one, two or more firearms are involved. ShotSpotter retains ownership of the system and provides information to police departments via leasing arrangements with municipalities.

ShotSpotter supporters point to Chicago and Peoria as cities where the technology has proven successful. In Chicago, where a three-year contract with the company is costing the city $23 million, ShotSpotter has been a piece in a larger technological puzzle that includes surveillance cameras. ShotSpotter claims credit for reductions in gun violence in cities throughout the nation.

Police in Fresno, California, credit ShotSpotter with stopping a gunman in 2017 who randomly killed three people in a downtown district before giving himself up. Kori Ali Muhammad had gunned down a motel security guard a few days earlier, then watched from a nearby rooftop as police responded. “Kori Muhammad would be outstanding today if it wasn’t for shots-fired detection,” Fresno police chief Jerry Dyer said after the arrest.

Results elsewhere have been mixed.

In St. Louis, researchers in a 2012 study found that ShotSpotter, which had been installed in high-crime neighborhoods four years earlier, had no appreciable effect on reducing crimes committed with firearms. With 900 gunshots detected in a three-month period, 17 crimes were detected, one arrest was made and 5% of alerts turned out to be fireworks: Bottom line, more than 98% of ShotSpotter alerts produced no useable evidence, and people were better than ShotSpotter in discerning gunshots from firecrackers, according to researchers who included a Southern Illinois University professor and a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department crime analyst. They posited that improved police intelligence would be more effective than gunshot detection technology.

In 2016, police in Charlotte, North Carolina, terminated a $160,000 annual contract with ShotSpotter, saying that the system wasn’t effective. First financed with federal grants, the system was initially installed as part of security measures for the 2012 Democratic National Convention held in downtown Charlotte. It was later expanded to a neighborhood that had five times the violent crime rate as the rest of the city, according to the Charlotte Observer. In an interview with the newspaper, a ShotSpotter official said that installation in low-crime areas helped explain why the technology hadn’t reduced crime in Charlotte.

Street cops told a different tale.

“The thing about ShotSpotter is, we pick it up about 30 seconds to a minute later,” Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer John Frisk told a reporter in 2015, after a 14-year-old boy was shot and ShotSpotter proved no help. “We still have to respond, so we might be two or three minutes away when we get the call. That’s a lot of time if you really think about it.”

Concerns go beyond North Carolina. “The officers do not have confidence in this system,” John Tedesco, police chief in Troy, New York, told the media after Troy canceled a three-year contract with ShotSpotter in 2012. The head of the police union agreed, saying that citizens provided better information to police than ShotSpotter.

In Ohio, Lt. Col. Paul Neudigate of the Cincinnati Police Department praised ShotSpotter two years ago, when shootings went down during the first three months of 2018.

“Prior to the (ShotSpotter) implementation, we were only responding to 15 percent of the gun incidents,” Neudigate told a Cincinnati television station two years ago. “We’re responding to 100 percent of them now.” But shootings in Cincinnati are at a four-year high this year, according to media reports, with homicides, mostly via firearms, up 115 percent during the first three months of 2020.

“There isn’t any evidence on this, mostly because the key stakeholders apparently haven’t decided it’s worth their while to produce it,” Jennifer Doleac, a University of Virginia researcher who’s spent years studying gunshot-detection technology, told the Cincinnati Enquirer in 2017. “And ShotSpotter, as far as they’re concerned, as long as people keep signing contracts, it’s not in their best interest to produce any evidence. … At some point, some city is going to have to do the study so we can all move on with our lives.”

ShotSpotter has resisted efforts to make data public. In 2015, the company sent municipalities with contracts a memo on how to handle requests for records. Data, the company reminded public agencies, is property owned by ShotSpotter. One option is to deny requests, the company told customers, otherwise, redactions should be made. “Any ShotSpotter data made available in this form must be in a printed format only, which would allow the public to view/consume the data without having the ability to redistribute electronic versions of the data,” the company wrote. ShotSpotter’s advice runs contrary to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, which says that public bodies must provide electronic records if they are available and requesters ask for them instead of paper copies.

In 2016, Forbes magazine reported that data gleaned from seven cities raised doubts. “When combined with police dispatch records that show what happened when officers responded to the alerts, a clear pattern emerges: lots of calls, but few tangible results,” the magazine reported. “Of the thousands of ShotSpotter alerts in these cities, police were unable to find evidence of gunshots between 30% and 70% of the time.”

ShotSpotter is a defendant in a pending federal lawsuit filed in New York state by Silvon Simmons, who says that he was shot by a Rochester police officer in 2016 for no good reason. The cops said Simmons fired first. Four shell casings from the officer’s gun were recovered. ShotSpotter initially classified the gunshots as noise from a helicopter, according to Simmons’ lawsuit. When police asked the company to check, SpotSpotter found three shots, then four shots, and, ultimately, five shots, according to the lawsuit. Charged with attempted murder and several other offenses, Simmons was acquitted of all charges save for criminal possession of a weapon. The trial judge threw out that conviction, saying that it rested on ShotSpotter data that wasn’t reliable. Prosecutors dropped the case when the judge ruled that ShotSpotter data could not be admitted as evidence in a new trial.

In Springfield, Chief Winslow last week told aldermen that no city funds have yet been spent, but the system is installed. All that is needed is council approval of funds so that it can be switched on. He said that he wants ShotSpotter in the capital city.

“I’ve talked with other communities, and they see the value in this,” Winslow told the city council. “I think it is a vital part of our overall gun violence reduction plan.”

Ward 1 Ald. Chuck Redpath told colleagues last week that ShotSpotter delivers too little bang for the buck. “It’s not going to solve crimes like you say they’re going to solve,” Redpath said. “I don’t think this technology is what it’s hyped up to be.”

Ward 2 Ald. Shawn Gregory, Ward 3 Ald. Doris Turner, Ward 5 Ald. Andrew Proctor and Ward 6 Ald. Kristin DiCenso spoke in favor of ShotSpotter during last week’s committee of the whole meeting. Turner said ShotSpotter will produce evidence that will get shooters off the streets. Gregory compared the cost of ShotSpotter, which he said is needed, to the price of leaf collection. “It’s just as important as that, if not more important,” Gregory said.

Proctor said one of his children last year asked what those sounds were when a gunshot rang out in Enos Park. “This is one of those items where we should not pause,” Proctor said. DiCenso recounted calling police several times to report shots being fired.

“I don’t like the price tag,” DiCenso said. “This is necessary.”

Contact Bruce Rushton at brushton@illinoistimes.com.

This article appears in Spring Home & Garden 2020.