A grant from the Cleveland Police Foundation will provide $250,000 for the first year of a two-year trial period and another $125,000 the second year.
The money will pay most of the costs of monitoring sensors in a high-crime area of the Fourth Police District on the city’s East Side. More than 3,000 gunshot calls were reported in those three square miles over the last three years and more than 35 percent of the homicides in the Fourth District occurred in the area.
The Fourth District, Cleveland’s largest, encompasses about 16 square miles.
The sensor technology can distinguish between soundwaves specific to gunfire from waves caused by firecrackers or backfiring vehicles and pinpoints the point of origin and the type of weapon.
The systems can alert police almost immediately after a gun is fired – in some cases before a 911 call is made -- and it pinpoint a location so police can quickly respond.
Fourth District police Commander Brandon Kutz wouldn’t disclose the specific borders of the area where the system will be tested. It is an area that overlaps parts of Wards 1, 2, 4 and 6 and is in the heart of the Fourth District, he said.
“One of [the reasons] is that we still want the public to call,” he said. “We don’t want them to think they don’t have to call because we’ve got the system. We don’t want to lose our public interaction.”
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