“I think that Seattle is in a really good position right now where we can learn from all of these cities, what has not worked for them and not waste public funds, trying the same things that we already know have not worked,” said former Seattle City Councilmember Lisa Herbold.
Herbold, who chaired the Council’s Public Safety Committee, opposed ShotSpotter and this kind of technology during her time on the Council.
“One of the mantras of Mayor Harrell that I really love is this idea of One Seattle,” Herbold said. “And I don’t think this is moving forward in that spirit.”
She said the city should instead prioritize faster police response times or focus on programs like the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, which invests in organizations that focus on disrupting cycles of violence in communities in the Central District as well as West and Southeast Seattle.
“People think of me as being a champion of civil rights and I am, but with my criticism of this technology, I’m intentionally taking off my civil liberties hat and putting on a hat that is about focusing our resources on public safety issues in a strategic way that makes good sense and use of limited resources,” Herbold said.
A study from the Journal of Experimental Criminology looked at the efficacy of pairing a camera system with a different gunshot detector technology, like the system Seattle is proposing, in high-crime areas in Philadelphia, and found a 259% increase in reported gunshots but no increase in confirmed shootings.
The alerts did increase the workload of police going to places where no evidence of a shooting had occurred, according to the report.
Researchers found that in the first months of implementation, false alarms accounted for more than 80% of the detected sounds, and some studies have shown that these numbers do not improve over time.
In 2012 the Philadelphia Police Department established a real-time crime center, where staff receive 911 calls and can look at live monitoring cameras of an area to see when a crime is occuring, or capture evidence after it has occurred.
Denver renewed its five-year contract with ShotSpotter in 2022. The Denver Police Department said it received nearly 5,000 ShotSpotter alerts in 2023, resulting in 122 arrests and 104 recovered firearms.
Denver Chief of Police Ron Thomas said ShotSpotter has helped officers reach victims quickly and get them treatment, as well as take suspects into custody and recover evidence.
Thomas said mixed opinions on the technology remain in Denver. Some people feel they are over-surveilled, while others are thankful the technology exists.
While ShotSpotter in Denver is not used in tandem with a specific camera system, like the one proposed by Mayor Harrell, Thomas said they sometimes use footage from surveillance and traffic cameras near areas where ShotSpotter is located to determine where shots were fired and take measures to reduce gunfire in those areas.
He acknowledged there are kinks in the system, with officers sometimes having to respond to false positives like fireworks, garbage disposals or other loud noises, but says officers go through a process to identify if what was heard is gunfire, like a neighborhood survey where people can tell police what they heard or saw.
“There are very infrequent occasions where they get it wrong,” Thomas said. “We have to use the ground truth to notify them [the company] that a false positive came through.”
How the technology works
For ShotSpotter, microphones are spread around an area. When loud sounds that resemble gunfire are detected, they calculate the sound’s location, said Thomas Chittum, senior vice president of forensic services at SoundThinking.
Company employees filter the sounds to determine if they are gunshots; if they are, alerts are sent to police. Chittum said this allows police to respond sooner to incidents and let communities know law enforcement are doing their jobs.
He believes it is a mischaracterization to say that a lot of cities canceled their contracts, when it was only a handful.
“What they should look at instead is the very large number of customers that we do have that do renew, that expand their coverage or that acquire the system because they know that it will help them do a better job of responding to gunfire in their areas,” Chittum said.
Chittum said using ShotSpotter with a proposed camera system is an effective strategy to end gun violence and build strong connections with the community.
“The fact of the matter is there’s no single thing that can singlehandedly tackle gun crime,” Chittum said. “It really does take a layered approach.”
What the research says
Various independent studies have shown the technology fails to accomplish its objective. A study from 1999 to 2016 across 68 large U.S. metropolitan counties said ShotSpotter had no significant impact on firearm-related homicides or arrest outcomes.
Researchers said the annual cost of gun violence to the U.S. economy is around $229 million. ShotSpotter’s fees for large cities like Chicago and New York range from $3.9 to $5.4 million a year. The study concluded the technology is only adding to the cost of gun violence in the nation, instead of reducing it.
“Unlike public policies that take time and political will to implement, ShotSpotter is available for purchase, and its implementation is dictated by a municipality’s willingness to pay,” the researchers wrote.
ShotSpotter costs $65,000 to $90,000 per square mile per year, along with a $10,000-per-square-mile one-time service fee.
The Washington State Institute for Public Policy has kept track of the costs and benefits of public policy programs since the 1990s, and a 2015 review of the research found crime prevention programs at the youth and adult level to be more effective than using technology like CCTV to reduce crime.
Instead, the report said using cameras in high-crime areas merely increased the chances that offenders would plead guilty after a crime occurred, instead of preventing it from happening. While this data has been available for decades, the study said its cost-benefit analysis is underused in the study of crime prevention.
Jadenne Radoc Cabahug
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