In essentially the most damning report but concerning the inefficiency of gunshot detection know-how, a public protection group on Wednesday launched an evaluation displaying that lower than 1 p.c of the alerts New York Metropolis’s ShotSpotter system generated over a nine-year interval led to the restoration of a gun or the identification of a suspect in a gun crime.
Of the greater than 75,000 gunfire alerts the town’s ShotSpotter system has generated since 2015, the New York Metropolis Police Division was solely in a position to affirm that 16.57 p.c of them have been precise gunfire, versus fireworks, building, or different loud sounds, in keeping with the report from Brooklyn Defenders. The evaluation is predicated on 9 years of NYPD information together with assessments made by division workers about whether or not alerts have been true or false, which Brooklyn Defenders obtained by means of a public document request.
“Like so a lot of NYPD’s different massively costly and invasive applied sciences, ShotSpotter is an engine for over-policing that results in an inflow of police in Black and Latine neighborhoods based mostly on false gunshot alerts,” Jackie Gosdigian, Brooklyn Defenders’ senior coverage supervisor stated in a press release. “Given the device’s lack of reliability and excessive price ticket, it’s clear that NYC mustn’t renew its contract for this know-how. As a substitute, the town ought to use this funding on efforts that really make our communities safer: schooling, well being, poverty discount, cure-violence and community-based applications, and different assets.”
New York Metropolis’s contract with SoundThinking, the corporate behind ShotSpotter, is ready to run out this month. By that time, the town may have paid the corporate greater than $54 million for the know-how.
Gunshot detection sensors have been the goal of fierce criticism from civil rights advocates and neighborhood teams who level out that the sensors are disproportionately put in in predominantly minority neighborhoods and that the alerts set off emergency responses from officers who arrive anticipating to discover a shooter.
The Brooklyn Defender report is the biggest of its type and attracts on the NYPD’s information however its findings are just like different analyses of gunshot detection know-how in New York and different cities.
Earlier this 12 months, the New York Metropolis comptroller’s workplace revealed an audit of ShotSpotter alerts over an eight-month interval in 2022 and 2023. It concluded that solely 13 p.c of the alerts may very well be conclusively tied to gunfire.
The comptroller’s workplace additionally known as on the NYPD to not renew its ShotSpotter contract with out first considerably growing oversight and accountability mechanisms for the know-how.
In 2021, the Chicago Workplace of Inspector Common discovered that solely 9 p.c of ShotSpotter alerts over a 17-month interval may very well be linked to a gun crime. This 12 months, Chicago canceled its contract with SoundThinking.
SoundThinking and the NYPD didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The corporate and division have beforehand criticized the town comptroller’s report, claiming that it’s unfair to say a ShotSpotter alert couldn’t be confirmed as gunfire when the division might discover no bodily or witness proof to recommend a taking pictures occurred.
