For the most part, ShotSpotter does just that, but a 911 call study published in January found that if cities were expecting it to reduce shootings or affect the crime rate, they won’t be satisfied with the software.
“What our research found, and other research as well, is that ShotSpotter achieves those intermediate means. So police tend to respond quicker to ShotSpotter alerts than 911 calls on average, police collect more evidence from ShotSpotter calls than 911 calls; however, ShotSpotter does not show any association with reduced crime or increased likelihood that crimes will be solved,” said Eric Piza, a criminal justice and criminology professor at Northeastern University and the principal investigator of the study, titled The Impact of Gunshot Detection Technology on Gun Violence in Kansas City and Chicago: A Multi-Pronged Evaluation, published with a U.S. Justice Department grant.
There has been recent controversy surrounding ShotSpotter, which means at least some people in some of the cities that have deployed ShotSpotter believe it may not be worth it.
Chicago has paid between $8.8 million and $12.3 million a year for ShotSpotter since 2017, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune, which outlined criticism of the software from city leaders including the mayor.
“There’s a lot of controversy,” Piza said, “and it’s hard to say [if it is worth the cost] just for the simple fact that most cities with ShotSpotter don’t bother to have put much effort into evaluating what they’re getting out of the system.”
Piza said that when Northeastern began its research, they were able to find just seven other studies like it that measured whether or not ShotSpotter reduced crime.
“That’s a drop in the bucket," he said. "Upwards of 250 agencies around the world have invested in the technology, so it seems just by that figure that most agencies that buy ShotSpotter don’t ask questions about whether it’s delivering a return on investment that they were expecting.”
In the Tribune article, it was noted that many of the ShotSpotter “calls” weren’t accompanied by 911 calls and could have been inaccuracies.
“All of those officers are not available to respond to other emergencies,” said Jonathan Manes, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center, which is suing the city of Chicago to end the use of ShotSpotter. “This is not a tool that makes police more efficient, it imposes additional burdens on police for, as far as we can tell, no public safety benefit.”
Some police, at least initially, see benefits in ShotSpotter. Aurora, Ill., Police Chief Keith Cross told the Beacon-News late last year that since they began using it several years ago, the software has enabled police to locate more precisely where shots are fired and that many of those shots wouldn’t have been reported without it. He also noted an increase in recovered evidence since deploying the software, including firearms. “They are up as well due to the number of leads off technology,” he said.
“While we believe ShotSpotter is a vital tool in any city’s toolbox to assist law enforcement in delivering efficient, effective, and equitable responses, it would be a mistake to frame the technology’s greatest purpose as a system solely used to result in arrest," Sarah Lattman, a spokesperson for SoundThinking, the company that produces ShotSpotter, wrote in an email to Emergency Management.
“ShotSpotter’s main value,” Lattman wrote, “is in the lives it saves. Over 80 percent of gunfire goes unreported to 911 and law enforcement must have a tool to close that gap and respond immediately to any instance of outdoor gunshots in case there is a corresponding victim. ShotSpotter has led police to hundreds of gunshot-wound victims with no corresponding 911 call, so we must not ignore the importance of this technology’s ability to bring care to victims who may otherwise not receive the aid they need.”
“It’s hard to say whether most cities are satisfied with it, frankly,” Piza said, “because most cities aren’t bothering to ask the questions of whether they should be satisfied with it.”
But it’s technology, he explained, and sometimes technology is deployed and left to do what it does.
“It’s an issue with technology generally speaking," Piza said. “Over the last few decades, policing has become very technology driven. It’s not just ShotSpotter. Every aspect of policing has leaned heavily into technology over the last few decades.”
