When gunshots ring out, police will tell you that seconds count. That's why a gunshot warning technology called ShotSpotter has been so popular with police departments across the country for years.
“It's very important for the city to know where shootings are occurring and be able to respond immediately as quickly as possible,” Mayor Michelle Wu said Wednesday.
Now, a new report by the ACLU of Massachusetts is raising questions about ShotSpotter's effectiveness. The ACLU announced that it analyzed 1,300 reports obtained from Boston police regarding so-called ShotSpotter activity between 2020 and 2022.
Cade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, said, “In nearly 70 percent of incidents, Boston Police Department officers do not find evidence of a shot fired in response to a ShotSpotter alert.'' ” he said. “This technology is unreliable, and police are searching for the shooter in areas where there may not have even been a shooting.”
The ACLU has previously argued that these police actions, coupled with the way human analysis is applied to technology, could lead to violations of the civil liberties of people living in the neighborhood.
Dr. Eric Pizza is director of the Crime Analysis Initiative and a professor at Northeastern University. He led what is believed to be the largest study on ShotSpotter, analyzing data from his 15 years in Kansas City and Chicago.
“Fundamentally, we found that there are procedural benefits to this technology. For example, ShotSpotter calls get officers to the scene a little faster, but we don't see any improvement in terms of public safety. I didn’t,” Pizza said. “While shootings did not decrease in ShotSpotter areas after ShotSpotter was installed, shootings were no longer likely to be solved in either city after ShotSpotter was installed.”
City leaders are debating the effectiveness and implementation of software that detects gunshots.
Pizza also pointed to the benefits of adopting ShotSpotter as a police tool, adding to what ECHO studies in other cities have found.
“ShotSpotter may detect shots that would never have been reported on 911, so if that's important to a government agency, certainly this can be a valuable tool,” he said. I did. “On the other hand, I would hesitate to say that this is the tool for government agencies if their return on investment is to see significant reductions in gun violence and increased solvability.”
SoundThinking, the company behind ShotSpotter, claims all of these studies are wrong.
“I think our critics haven't actually read the research. Research consistently shows that ShotSpotter increases awareness of shootings more than 911 calls alone,” says SoundThinking said Thomas Chittam, senior vice president of forensic services at . “ShotSpotter alerts are faster by the minute, and when you’re talking about gunshot injuries, time is of the essence.”
Chittam said ShotSpotter remains an important tool for law enforcement.
“Occasionally, our critics will pull out a piece of research suggesting that ShotSpotter does not specifically reduce crime, but my response to that is that it shows us the only tool that can. “I want you to do it,” he said. “Too often our critics present the false choice between a shot spotter or a civil liberties, a shot spotter or a proper law enforcement officer, but this is simply not true. , or, not either, and, and.”
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