OPINION | ShotSpotter: Why Waste Money We Don't Have on a Technology That Doesn't Work?

by Marcus Harrison Green

(This article is co-published with The Seattle Times.)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are we not staring dismally at a near quarter-billion-dollar budget deficit in this city?

Given the boa-constrictor grip soon to be tightening around our finances, maybe this is not the best time for our City Council to consider spending money on a controversial and ineffective technology when we just so happen to have a hydra-headed crisis of addiction, homelessness, and affordability in this city.

The technology in question is an acoustic gun detection and surveillance technology known as ShotSpotter.

Last December, the outgoing City Council narrowly voted to allot $1.8 million to pilot the project. However, the decision to release those funds and implement the technology now rests in the hands of our current City Council. The City originally planned a 24-day public comment period about the technology that was set to conclude on Feb. 29 but has since been extended to the end of March.

Currently, the Office for Civil Rights is analyzing ShotSpotter using Seattle's Racial Equity Toolkit — an evaluation process that identifies a policy's potential racially disparate impacts. But our council can choose to either ignore or heed the final results of that analysis.

As I see it, here is the TikTok video-length version of what the technology purports to do: A gunshot goes off; police are roused in response; they arrive at a scene to either catch a foul villain in an act of deviance or, should the scoundrels scatter, collect data that could lead to the eventual apprehension of said scoundrels.

If that sounds too good to be true, well, it just might be.

Critics of ShotSpotter have called it yet another dangerous surveillance device targeting already overpoliced communities. In a statement about the technology on her organization's website, Shruti "Tee" Sannon of ACLU-WA said, "Such extensive surveillance systems chill free speech, deter free association, fuel racial disparity in policing, and provide a false sense of security at the cost of privacy and race equity."

We already know the hotspots in the city where gun violence is most prevalent. Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz said as much during a March 14 public safety town hall held at the downtown library, where Mayor Bruce Harrell and other City Council members were present. It was held just a day after two separate shootings in the Central District injured a young woman and took the life of another.

People in the Central District, South Seattle, and Chinatown-International District, where gun violence is most concentrated in Seattle, have long been fed up with crime and violence in their areas. They have long asked for action when all they have received is rhetoric.

However, I do not explicitly recall them asking to be made geographic guinea pigs for technology that does not even prevent gun violence.

Speaking at that March 14 public safety meeting, Harrell flatly stated that the technology should not be viewed as a tool of gun prevention, but one of evidence gathering.

"This is a simple tool of technology," Harrell told those in attendance."I want accurate data on where guns are being fired."

If he wants to look more accurately than the three neighborhoods I mentioned, he may have to peer beyond ShotSpotter. Studies have called into question the technology's ability to decipher gunshots from sounds such as fireworks in dense urban neighborhoods.

SoundThinking, the company behind the technology, has claimed that it can detect gunfire with 97% accuracy. However, a study conducted by the MacArthur Justice Center, using data obtained from the City of Chicago over three years, showed that at best only 11% of ShotSpotter deployments found any gun-related crime, and only 14% found any crime at all.

A separate study by UC Santa Barbara microeconomist Michael Topper found that ShotSpotter slowed police response to 911 calls due to dead-end alerts. In yet another study, this one by Northeastern University criminology professor Eric Piza showed that ShotSpotter did not lead to a reduction in gun violence nor improved "clearance" rates for gun violence cases.

One case led to a police interaction that could have proven fatal for a child.

Last January, Chicago Police responded to a ShotSpotter alert that mistook firecrackers for gunshots. The police opened fire on the child who set off the firecrackers. By a miracle, the child was not killed, though I can only imagine the trauma induced by the incident.

Coincidentally, after spending $49 million on ShotSpotter since 2018, Chicago has recently joined other cities like San Antonio and Portland, Oregon, in not renewing its contract.

That's $49 million that could have gone to schools, transportation, job training, affordable housing, health clinics, or community centers. Instead, it is a sunk cost spent on a public safety placebo.

We have communities here that are in need of healing, in need of resources, in need of jobs, in need of housing, in need of food security.

In need of the things that dull the flames of violence rather than allow them to rage.

A budget crisis crystallizes our priorities.

So then, why should something that admittedly does not make us safer, is dubious in its effectiveness, and recently was jettisoned by America's third-largest city be one of them?

In my four decades in this city, I've observed the tendency for social initiatives and programs to be scrutinized with the piercing eye of fiscal responsibility. When it comes to something equally as experimental but carceral in nature, that skepticism seems to disappear.

Demanding a technology proves its effectiveness before we purchase it does not mean we are any less outraged about the gun violence in our city. It means we very rationally would rather allocate funds towards something with demonstrable efficacy.

At that March 14 public safety meeting, Harrell said, "It's time to do something different, and not the same thing over again."

On that much, we agree.

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📸 Featured Image: Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell speaks at a public safety town hall on March 14, 2024, along with Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz and others. (Photo: Susan Fried)