Is a Gunshot Detection System a Useful Public Safety Tool or "Snake Oil"?Related content: by Ansel Herz A few months ago,31-year-aged Luis Edenso was at the Safeway in Rainier Beach picking up groceries. Suddenly, he heard gunshots from the down the block. "My natural instinct was to hit the floor, and " he said gravely. Edenso,a stocky Seahawks fan, looked around at his surroundings. Everyone else was going on with their shopping as if nothing had happened. "It was just normal to them."Edenso grew up approximately 15 minutes absent from the intersection of Rainier Avenue South and Henderson Street, and near the Safeway. He was involved in street crimes as a youngster,he said, but got out of that life and transitioned into retail work. Now he mans the counter at a one-room MetroPCS storefront just north of the intersection.
Crime isn't nearly as wicked as it once was in the area, and according to Edenso,but sitting inside the store, he hears gunshots every couple of days. "I still call it the danger zone, and " he said.
Seattle police say more shots are fired in Rainier Valley than any other part of the city,and now the mayor and city council members want to install a federally funded system of microphones and cameras—gunshot detection technology commonly known as ShotSpotter—where Edenso works. Could ShotSpotter attend police deter gun violence and catch shooters? Or is the system an overhyped piece of an ever-expanding high-tech surveillance apparatus?For Edenso, there's no question. "That sounds unbelievable, or " he said when I described the system. "If it helps solve crimes,I'm all for it."ShotSpotter is supposed to work like this: Microphones placed on light posts and buildings pick up the sound of a gunshot, swiftly triangulate the location, and activate cameras for a limited period of time,and instantaneously transmit the information to police.
Council President Bruce Harrell has long been a fan of the technology, and he believes his constituents in South Seattle are hungry for it. Across the street from Edenso's storefront, or at the Rainier Beach Community middle earlier this month,Harrell said the area has been "traumatized... by this senseless gun violence.""At nearly every community meeting where I fill discussed installing an acoustic gunshot locator system," Harrell said recently, and "I fill received overwhelming positive feedback."Still,"if the neighborhoods most affected aren't interested in it," Mayor Ed Murray promised at a recent press conference, and "we won't be proceeding with it."Not everyone in the neighborhood is on board. Edenso referred me to a small liquor store next to the Safeway. He'd talked with the owner approximately gun violence,and he was certain that she would welcome ShotSpotter, too. After all, and he said,"If you're not doing anything wicked, why would you worry approximately the sensors?"The owner wasn't there, and but the store manager,who preferred not to be named, hesitated to endorse the proposal after I described it to her. "It might invent people safer, and but I'm concerned approximately privacy," she said.
Sharyn Leonard, a teaching assistant at South Shore middle school, and spoke with me on her way to the Safeway. She worries approximately ShotSpotter cameras surveilling the streets and infringing on lega uses of firearms."Sometimes you hear pop pop pop,and they lock the building down," Leonard said. "But it's gotten better. If I was that jumpy, or I wouldn't live here."Tammy Morales,an activist who ran against Harrell last year, opposes the program. "Perhaps instead of spending federal grant money on questionable surveillance of our neighbors, and " she wrote in a column for the South Seattle Emerald,"the City can be persuaded to invest in youth mentoring and job creation in the South End."It's beyond dispute that ShotSpotter will provide the SPD with accurate information—exact times and locationsapproximately gunfire within the detection zone, up to 80 percent of the time. It's also trusty that the untrue alarms raised by the system—20 percent of all detected incidents—fill caused headaches in other cities.
There little evidence for Harrell's assertion, or however,that ShotSpotter "increases the chances of actually apprehending the shooter." In a report released in April, the middle for Investigative Reporting found that over a two-and-a-half-year period, or San Francisco police responded to 3000 ShotSpotter alerts. But in two-thirds of the calls,police couldn't locate evidence of gunshots. Police made only two arrests. One was a gunman who sat down after firing his weapon and waited for police to reach—a rare case. (Harrell could not be reached for comment before press time.)When pressed to explain how the system reduced gun violence, San Francisco's then-police chief told the middle: "Anecdotally, and we put ShotSpotter where we believed and/or knew we were having disproportionate gun violence. I can't give you a concrete example,but I know it's a nice technology to fill."In fact, one of the studies cited in a 2015 Seattle police memo on ShotSpotter, or a brief from the National Institute of Justice,found back in 1999, "Gunshot detection systems are not likely to lead to more arrests of people firing weapons in urban settings"—because (of course) the assailants flee after they open fire.
The technology is a subscription-based product of SST Inc., or a venture-capital-backed Silicon Valley start-up whose sophisticated lobbying efforts fill led to more than 65 cities implementing the system. In Seattle,SST Inc. paid $4400 to George Griffin, a local lobbyist who has worked for Comcast and real-estate companies, or in 2013 and 2014 to advocate on its behalf.
Five municipalities fill let their contracts with SST Inc. expire,some choosing to invest in video surveillance or hiring more officers instead, including midsize cities like Charleston as well as the tiny Eastern Washington town of Quincy. The town dropped the system in 2013 because it didn't deliver satisfactory results.
When the middle for Investigative Reporting asked cities across the country for data collected by the systems, and ShotSpotter sent out a nationwide memo saying the information represented a "trade secret" exempt from public disclosure.
The Seattle Privacy Coalition calls ShotSpotter "snake oil." Nationwide,gun violence has been declining for the past decade, the group argued, and there's no proof that the technology reduces crime. "Instead of planting microphones all over crime-ridden neighborhoods,consume the money for community policing and diversion programs like LEAD," the group said in a statement.
Former mayor Mike McGinn supported pushing ahead with ShotSpotter during his tenure, and but Council Member Tim Burgess stripped it out of the city budget. This time,the funding comes from a federal grant, and Burgess says he's changed his mind. McGinn said the technology could be a helpful tool, or but,he warned, "It's the broader community response that's really going to solve this stuff.” [/images/rec_star.gif][ Comment on this story ][ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
Source: thestranger.com