ShotSpotter Inc. is a publicly traded, Fremont, California-based company known for its controversial
gunfire locator
A gunfire locator or gunshot detection system is a system that detects and conveys the location of gunfire or other weapon fire using acoustic, vibration, optical, or potentially other types of sensors, as well as a combination of such sensors ...
service. ShotSpotter claims it can identify whether or not a gunshot was fired in an area in order to dispatch
law enforcement
Law enforcement is the activity of some members of government who act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules
Rule or ruling may refer to:
Education ...
, though researchers have noted concerns about effectiveness, reliability, privacy, and equity. The company has been partnering with cities and police since 1997, and as of 2022 has been utilized by more than 130 cities and law enforcement agencies in the US.
History
ShotSpotter was founded by Robert Showen in the 1990s while he was working for
SRI International
SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic ...
. He created a company in 1996 and tested prototypes in
Redwood City, California
Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a ...
. Its early success was described by ''
Wired
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...
'' as being "due to good PR, not good technology." James Beldock joined as CEO in 2003 as a "turnaround specialist"; in 2005 the company merged with Centurist Systems, which was creating acoustic sniper location systems for the military; Centurist held a "deceptively simple patent" for the location algorithm. Centurist's CEO, Scott Manderville, became president of the board.
As of 2021, the acoustic locator technology was installed in 125 cities and 14 campuses, covering 911 square miles. The locators are typically installed at 20–25 sensors per square mile and primarily connected via 4G networks (mostly
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...
and
Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas ...
). In 2020, Chicago was 18% of the company's revenue, and New York City was 15%.
Ralph Clark was named CEO of ShotSpotter in 2010. The company went public in June 2017. The company authorized a stock buyback program in 2019 and bought back $8.3 million by the end of 2020.
The company's gross revenues were $58.2 million in 2021 (increased coverage by 49 square miles and 10 cities), up from $45.7 million in 2020 (increased coverage by 49 square miles and 10 cities) and from $40.8 million in 2019 (increased coverage by 82 square miles and 6 cities). The company had a net loss of $4.4 million in 2021, in part from nonrenewal of contracts and increases in legal costs, PR from Trident DMG, and lobbying.
Toronto, Ontario
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
has declined to use the technology, as the
Ministry of the Solicitor General (Ontario)
The Ministry of the Solicitor General (french: Ministère du Solliciteur général; formerly known as the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services) is the ministry in the Government of Ontario responsible for public security, law ...
A June 2021 study in the Journal of Experimental Criminology stated the system "may be of little benefit to police agencies with a pre-existing high call volume. Our results indicate no reductions in serious violent crimes, yet hotSpotterincreases demands on police resources." An October 2021 paper in the
Journal of Urban Health
The ''Journal of Urban Health'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed public health journal covering epidemiology and public health in urban areas. It was established in 1851 as the ''Transactions of the New York Academy of Medicine'', and was renamed the ' ...
, studying the
longitudinal
Longitudinal is a geometric term of location which may refer to:
* Longitude
** Line of longitude, also called a meridian
* Longitudinal engine, an internal combustion engine in which the crankshaft is oriented along the long axis of the vehicl ...
effects of ShotSpotter over a 17 year period, found "implementing ShotSpotter technology has no significant impact on firearm-related homicides or arrest outcomes. Policy solutions may represent a more cost-effective measure to reduce urban firearm violence."
The NYU School of Law Policing Project published a paper in 2021, "Measuring the effects of ShotSpotter on Gunfire in St. Louis County, Mo". The paper indicated a significant drop in gun violence in the area. However, the paper also discloses that ShotSpotter "has provided the Policing Project with unrestricted funding".
Jennifer Doleac
Jennifer Doleac is an American economist and associate professor at Texas A&M. She also directs the Justice Tech Lab, hosts the Probable Causation podcast, is a research affiliate of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, and serves on the board ...
told Voice of San Diego that ShotSpotter "resisted attempts (by me and others) to do a rigorous evaluation of its impacts", noting "they’ve clearly found that they can get cities to sign their contracts without such evidence."
Accuracy
As of 2021, ShotSpotter evidence has been used in 190 court cases. ShotSpotter has admitted it manually alters the computer-calculated evidence "on a semiregular basis", and it has never been independently tested, leading to doubts on its accuracy. Vice's '' Motherboard'' noted that ShotSpotter "frequently modify alerts at the request of police departments." ''
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...
'' also noted their "methods for identifying gunshots aren't always guided solely by the technology."
While the company claims a 97% accuracy, the
MacArthur Justice Center MacArthur or Macarthur may refer to:
Places
* Macarthur, Australian Capital Territory, a suburb of Canberra, Australia
* Macarthur, New South Wales, a region of Metropolitan Sydney, Australia
** Division of Macarthur
** Macarthur railway station
* ...
studied over 40,000 dispatches in an under 2-year period in Chicago and found that 89% of dispatches resulted in no gun-related crime, and 86% resulted in no crime at all. These results were backed up by a subsequent report by the Chicago Inspector General, which also found that police officers changed their practice by stopping and searching people for no other reason than that they were in a place known to have many ShotSpotter alerts. ShotSpotter's CEO described an earlier 80% accuracy rate as "basically our subscription warranty," but employee Paul Greene said "Our guarantee was put together by our sales and marketing department, not our engineers."
The ACLU has raised questions about privacy and surveillance, as the detectors keep hours or days of continuous audio. This audio has been admitted as evidence in at least one trial and rejected under a
wiretapping law in a 2017 case. When Forbes sent public records requests to agencies in 2016, ShotSpotter sent a memo to all of its customers, detailing how they should deny or redact the requests.
Additionally, the sensors are disproportionately placed in minority communities, leading to more interactions with police, often from false alerts from pneumatic
nail gun
A nail gun, nailgun or nailer is a form of hammer used to drive nails into wood or other materials. It is usually driven by compressed air (pneumatic), electromagnetism, highly flammable gases such as butane or propane, or, for powder-actuate ...
In April 2017, ShotSpotter was able to locate mass-shooter Kori Ali Muhammad, enabling police to apprehend him within minutes.
The
Rochester Police Department
The Rochester Police Department, also known as the RPD, is the principal law enforcement agency of the City of Rochester, New York, reporting to the city mayor. It currently has approximately 852 officers and support staff, a budget of approxima ...
in New York use ShotSpotter. In 2017, officer Joseph Ferrigno shot Silvon Simmons in the back. Accounts between Ferrigno and Simmons vary, but ShotSpotter initially detected the gunshots as a helicopter. The company reclassified it as three gunshots "per the customer's instruction," then revised it to four shots. Later the company's employee Paul Greene "was asked by the Rochester Police department to essentially search and see if there were more shots fired than ShotSpotter picked up," so it was revised to five gunshots, which put it in alignment with Ferrigno's claims. The jury didn't believe ShotSpotter's evidence, and Judge Ciaccio overturned a gun possession charge, describing the ShotSpotter evidence as flawed. Simmons filed a civil lawsuit against ShotSpotter in 2017, which is still open as of 2021.
Greene also testified in a 2018 case in Chicago where ShotSpotter initially reported two gunshots. On request of the Chicago Police Department, he re-analyzed and found seven gunshots. This matched the police department's account and was not supported by video or bullet casing evidence.
Another case of reclassification occurred in 2020 with the arrest of a Chicago man for the shooting murder of Safarain Herring. ShotSpotter initially classified the sound as a firework, but a ShotSpotter employee changed it to gunfire a minute later, and later changed the calculated location to match the defendant's known location — over a mile away. A public defender in the case filed a Frye motion to examine the ShotSpotter forensic method, and the prosecution withdrew the evidence to avoid scrutinizing it. The MacArthur Center along with Lucy Parsons Labs filed an amicus curiae in the case, supporting the Frye hearing, noting the false positives, the disproportionate deployment, and that "ShotSpotter provides a false technological justification for overpolicing." The defendant spent 11 months in jail before being released in 2021 when his case was dismissed for insufficient evidence.
A ShotSpotter report of shots fired was the impetus for police response which resulted in the March 2021 shooting death of a 13-year-old boy by the Chicago Police Department.
In New Bedford, Massachusetts, the gunshot sensors recorded parts of a conversation, leading to concerns that it violates Fourth Amendment rights. Remarking on these privacy concerns, in 2015 then-
NYPD
The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...
commissioner
William Bratton
William Joseph Bratton CBE (born October 6, 1947) is an American law enforcement officer and businessman who served two terms as the New York City Police Commissioner (1994–1996 and 2014–2016). He previously served as the Commissioner of th ...
said "the advocates have to get a life." Bratton had been on ShotSpotter's Board of Directors before then, and rejoined it in 2017.
In July 2022, the
MacArthur Justice Center MacArthur or Macarthur may refer to:
Places
* Macarthur, Australian Capital Territory, a suburb of Canberra, Australia
* Macarthur, New South Wales, a region of Metropolitan Sydney, Australia
** Division of Macarthur
** Macarthur railway station
* ...
brought a class action lawsuit against the
City of Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, the Chicago Police Department, and several individual police officers for constitutional violations in connection with the use of ShotSpotter. The lawsuit alleges that more than 90% of the time police respond to a ShotSpotter alert they find no indication of a gun-related incident and instead use the alerts to justify scores of illegal stops and arrests. The lawsuit also alleges that Chicago's ShotSpotter policy is racially discriminatory because the system was only implemented in areas with the highest concentration of Black and Latino residents.
Part of ShotSpotter's appeal to privacy is that police do not know the installed locations, which theoretically could allow police to acquire conversations from the ShotSpotter microphones.
Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News (originally Bloomberg Business News) is an international news agency headquartered in New York City and a division of Bloomberg L.P. Content produced by Bloomberg News is disseminated through Bloomberg Terminals, Bloomberg Tele ...
reported, however, that not only were the addresses given to the New York Police Department, but they relied on the police to help lobby for their installations. NYPD also stated they have also escorted ShotSpotter site survey teams.
ShotSpotter was activated for a shooting at the house of New Mexico Senator
Linda M. Lopez
Linda may refer to:
As a name
* Linda (given name), a female given name (including a list of people and fictional characters so named)
* Linda (singer) (born 1977), stage name of Svetlana Geiman, a Russian singer
* Anita Linda (born Alice Lake i ...
; police were dispatched but did not find evidence.
Design
ShotSpotter's gunshot detection system utilizes a series of sensors to capture loud, impulsive sounds. When such sounds are identified, sensors send data to a pair of algorithms responsible for identifying a location and determining if the event can be classified as potential gunfire. Employees at the company are charged with confirming incidents and notifying local police.
Although it is designed to be just an investigative tool for the police, it has also been used for actual primary evidence in trials, leading to criticism about ShotSpotter's effectiveness beyond its primary purpose.
Installations
Current
*
Antioch, California
Antioch is the third-largest city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area along the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta. The city's population was 115,291 at the 2020 cen ...
Fresno, California
Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...
*
Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
Sacramento, California
)
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, map_caption = Location within Sacramento ...
*
San Diego, California
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United Stat ...
District of Columbia
)
, image_skyline =
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*
Miami, Florida
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
*
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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(over 100 square miles, 3-year $33 million contract)
*
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...
* New Bedford, Massachusetts
*
Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Pittsfield is the largest city and the county seat of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the principal city of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Berkshire County. Pittsfield ...
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
($7 million phased installation in 2022, 32 sq mi)
*
Omaha, Nebraska
Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...
*
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vega ...
* Albuquerque, New Mexico (since 2020)
* Durham, North Carolina (pilot began in 2022, 3 square miles, $197k one-year contract)
* New York City
* Rochester, New York
* Syracuse, New York
* Cincinnati, Ohio
* Columbus, Ohio
* Mansfield, Ohio
* Youngstown, Ohio
* Warrensville Heights, Ohio
* Cleveland, Ohio ($2.8 million expansion to 13 sq mi in 2022 using American Rescue Plan Act funding)
* Toledo, Ohio
*
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...
*
Virginia Beach, Virginia
Virginia Beach is an independent city located on the southeastern coast of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The population was 459,470 at the 2020 census. Although mostly suburban in character, it is the most populous city ...
*
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...
(installed in 2010; contract renewal in March 2023)
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of New York (behind only New York City) and the seat of Erie County. It is at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River, and is across the Canadian border from Sou ...
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...
: tabled to allow for other bids
*
Seattle, Washington
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region ...
: Mayor Bruce Harrell proposed spending $1 million on ShotSpotter in 2022, but in November 2022, the city council approved a budget that did not include such funding. Budget chair Teresa Mosqueda cited issues with the technology identified by other cities as the reason it was not being pursued.
Former
*
San Antonio, Texas
("Cradle of Freedom")
, image_map =
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(cancelled in 2017)
*
Trenton, New Jersey
Trenton is the capital city of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County. It was the capital of the United States from November 1 to December 24, 1784.
*
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populo ...
(began in 2012, cancelled in 2016)
*
Dayton, Ohio
Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater D ...
(3 square miles, started in 2019, cancelled in 2022)
* Canton, Ohio (switched to Wi-Fiber detection in 2019)
* Cape Town, South Africa (2016-2019)
*
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,7 ...