ShotSpotter

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ShotSpotter Inc. is a publicly traded, Newark, California based company known for its controversial gunfire locator service.[1] ShotSpotter claims they can identify whether or not a gunshot was fired in an area in order to dispatch law enforcement.[2]

History[]

It was founded by Robert Showen in the 1990s while he was working for SRI International. He created a company in 1996 and tested prototypes in Redwood City, California. Its early success was described by Wired 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.[3][4][5][6][7]

In 2020, the acoustic locator technology was installed in 110 cities and 12 campuses, covering 779 square miles. The locators are typically installed at 20-25 sensors per square mile and primarily connected via 3G and 4G networks (mostly AT&T and Verizon). In 2020, Chicago was 18% of the company's revenue, and New York City was 15%.[4]

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.[4]

The company's gross revenues were $45.7 million in 2020 (increased coverage by 49 square miles and 10 cities), up from $40.8 million in 2019 (increased coverage by 82 square miles and 6 cities), up from $34.8 million in 2018 (increased coverage by 168 square miles and 10 cities).[4]

Toronto, Ontario has declined to use the technology, as the Ministry of the Solicitor General (Ontario) believes it violates Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The company previously provided indoor gunfire locator technology, but discontinued it in 2018.[4]

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 [ShotSpotter] increases demands on police resources."[8] 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".[9]

Key people[]

Notable directors:

Accuracy[]

As of 2021, ShotSpotter evidence has been used in 190 court cases. ShotSpotter has admitted they manually alter 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."[12][1] While the company claims a 97% accuracy, the MacArthur Justice Center 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.[14][15][16] The CEO described an earlier 80% accuracy rate as "basically our subscription warranty," and employee Paul Greene said "Our guarantee was put together by our sales and marketing department, not our engineers."[17]

The ACLU has raised questions about privacy and surveillance, as the detectors keep hours or days of continuous audio.[18] 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.[12]

Additionally, the sensors are disproportionately placed in minority communities, leading to more interactions with police, often from false alerts.[1][19][16][20]

Individual cases[]

In April 2017, ShotSpotter was able to locate mass-shooter Kori Ali Muhammad, enabling police to apprehend him within minutes.[21]

The Rochester Police Department 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.[1][22][23][24][25][26]

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.[1]

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.[27] 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.[1][28] 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."[16] The defendant spent 11 months in jail before being released in 2021 when his case was dismissed for insufficient evidence.[27]

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.[1]

In New Bedford, Massachusetts, the gunshot sensors recorded parts of a conversation, leading to concerns that it violates Fourth Amendment rights.[3][29] Remarking on these privacy concerns, in 2015 then-NYPD commissioner William Bratton said "the advocates have to get a life." Bratton had been on ShotSpotter's Board of Directors before then, and rejoined it in 2017.[30][31][32][33]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Todd Feathers (26 July 2021). "Police Are Telling ShotSpotter to Alter Evidence From Gunshot-Detecting AI". vice.com. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  2. ^ James Clayton (October 28, 2021). "Inside the controversial US gunshot-detection firm". BBC. Retrieved October 29, 2021.
  3. ^ a b Erica Goode (29 May 2012). "Shots Fired, Pinpointed and Argued Over (Published 2012)". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 30, 2012. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i "SSTI 2020 annual 10k". sec.gov. 29 March 2021. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  5. ^ "Gunshot-detection companies merge". militaryaerospace.com. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  6. ^ "ShotSpotter merges with Centurist - Silicon Valley Business Journal". Silicon Valley Business Journal. 7 March 2005. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  7. ^ Ethan Watters (1 April 2007). "Shot Spotter". Wired. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  8. ^ Mares, Dennis; Blackburn, Emily (2020). "Acoustic gunshot detection systems: a quasi-experimental evaluation in St. Louis, MO". Journal of Experimental Criminology. 17 (2): 193–215. doi:10.1007/s11292-019-09405-x. ISSN 1573-3750.
  9. ^ NYU School of Law Policing Project (January 2021). "Measuring the effects of Sharpspotter on Gunfire in St. Louis County, Mo" (PDF). static1.squarespace.com. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  10. ^ "ex 10.8 Ralph Clark agreement". sec.gov. 13 March 2017. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  11. ^ "ex 10.9 Alan Stewart agreement". sec.gov. 13 March 2017. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  12. ^ a b c Drange, Matt (17 November 2016). "We're Spending Millions On This High-Tech System Designed To Reduce Gun Violence. Is It Making A Difference?". Forbes. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  13. ^ "8K Item 5.02". sec.gov. 19 July 2021. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  14. ^ "ShotSpotter Generated Over 40,000 Dead-End Police Deployments in Chicago in 21 Months, According to New Study - MacArthur Justice". MacArthur Justice. 3 May 2021. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  15. ^ "End Police Surveillance". End Police Surveillance. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  16. ^ a b c "State of Illinois v Michael Williams, 20 CR 0899601, motion for leave to file brief as amici curiae - in support of defendant's motion for a Frye hearing" (PDF). endpolicesurveillance.com. 3 May 2021. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  17. ^ Jonah Owen Lamb (11 July 2017). "Courtroom testimony reveals accuracy of SF gunshot sensors a 'marketing' ploy - The San Francisco Examiner". The San Francisco Examiner. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  18. ^ Jay Stanley (5 May 2015). "Shotspotter CEO Answers Questions on Gunshot Detectors in Cities". ACLU. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  19. ^ Todd Feathers (19 July 2021). "Gunshot-Detecting Tech Is Summoning Armed Police to Black Neighborhoods". vice.com. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  20. ^ Ellen Hao (19 December 2017). "The Shots Heard Round the City". South Side Weekly. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  21. ^ "Inside the controversial US gunshot-detection firm". BBC News. Retrieved 30 October 2021.
  22. ^ Lisa Girion; Reade Levinson (17 November 2020). "A cop shoots a black man and a city resumes battle with police union". Reuters. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  23. ^ Lisa Girion; Reade Levinson (17 November 2020). "A black man risks all to clear his name - and expose the police". Reuters. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  24. ^ Lisa Girion; Reade Levinson (17 November 2020). "A U.S. city takes on its police union, and the union punches back". Reuters. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  25. ^ "Shotspotter report (PDF)" (PDF). Reuters. October 21, 2020. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  26. ^ Donna Jackel (2 July 2018). "He Was Shot in the Back By a Cop…Then Spent 18 Months in Jail". Narratively. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  27. ^ a b Burke, Garance; Mendoza, Martha; Linderman, Juliet; Tarm, Michael (August 19, 2021). "How AI-powered tech landed man in jail with scant evidence". AP News.
  28. ^ "Williams Frye motion to exclude f 20-CR-0899601" (PDF). PDF Host. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  29. ^ FRAGA, BRIAN (11 January 2012). "ShotSpotter recording of street argument raises potential privacy issues". southcoasttoday.com. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  30. ^ "WILLIAM J. BRATTON JOINS SHOTSPOTTER'S BOARD OF DIRECTORS - ShotSpotter". ShotSpotter. 15 November 2017. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  31. ^ J. David Goodman (23 December 2013). "Bratton Gives Revolving Door One More Spin (Published 2013)". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 25, 2013. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  32. ^ Christopher Mathias (25 March 2015). "NYPD Commissioner To Privacy Advocates: 'Get A Life'". HuffPost. Retrieved 26 July 2021.
  33. ^ Mott, Nathaniel (25 March 2015). "The NYPD's commissioner doesn't understand why people are upset about his new gunshot-tracking system". Pando. Retrieved 26 July 2021.

External links[]

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