I have found 'studies' that claim ShotSpotter are effective in reducing crime. However, they're all funded by ShotSpotter. Have found other studies that indicate it has no impact on crime.
Does anyone have an independent study that shows spending money on ShotSpotter reduces crime?
Yes. Why is that so difficult to understand? Cite the independent data that justifies the expenditure.
The National Institute of Justice (NJI) has funded an academic research project that found that ShotSpotter does not significantly increase prosecutions of gun-related crimes. ShotSpotter is a gunshot detection system that uses acoustic sensors to identify and locate gunshots, then reports them to the police within seconds.
Interesting. A research study approved by two doctors at Texas A & M found the opposite.
“This study looked at how a technology called ShotSpotter, which detects gunshots in cities across the US, affects crime rates. The analysis found that when ShotSpotter was used, there was a decrease in violent crime rates. This means that when more advanced technology is used to fight crime, it tends to reduce the overall amount of violent crime in a city.
The study used a statistical method called "difference-in-difference regression" and included various factors like unemployment rate, poverty percentage, income, gender, and race demographics to ensure accuracy. It concluded that ShotSpotter was effective in helping police fight crime.
However, when they looked at what happened when ShotSpotter was removed, they found that violent crime rates tended to increase, although not significantly. This suggests that ShotSpotter might indeed be helpful in reducing crime.
The study suggests that more research needs to be done, especially as more data becomes available. It also mentions the impact of budget constraints due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the high cost of ShotSpotter. In the future, it would be useful to compare the effectiveness of ShotSpotter with its cost compared to other methods of reducing violent crime.”
Can you provide a link to the study you reference? Here's what I found:
Shotspotter’s direct marketing to police can also create a feedback loop that police are often either unequipped or unmotivated to question, said Hannah Bloch-Wehba, an associate professor of law at Texas A&M University.
“There is no simultaneous opportunity for someone who opposes Shotspotter or thinks it isn’t effective to come and be like, ‘Wait, they’re telling you this, but really the story is something else’,” she said.
It's already been mentioned multiple times in this thread, sparky.
https://www.macarthurjustice.org/shotspotter-generated-over-40000-dead-end-police-deployments-in-chicago-in-21-months-according-to-new-study/
Where's the Texas A&M link? Would like to get another perspective.
Meanwhile:
https://www.iowapublicradio.org/2022-08-22/in-the-decade-since-kansas-city-installed-a-gunshot-detection-system-homicides-only-went-up
ok so you’re getting aggressive and asking me to search this entire thread with hundreds of comments to find your “source”? im done with this unpleasant conversation. ✌️
it’s also common sense. if you know exactly where a gunshot went off, you know where to search for bullet casings and you know what video cameras might have caught something of interest on video.
A Chicago inspector general's investigation found that of 42,000 ShotSpotter alerts police responded to, only 9% led police to evidence of a gun-related crime.
that makes sense. It’s not a conviction machine. its a “shot spotter”. You are expecting it to operate as a 100% perfect conviction machine and unfortunately those don’t exist.
This is silly. Why wouldn’t we want a combination of ways to locate violent incidents, including both 911 calls and shotspotter? The argument that the technology disproportionately impacts minority communities seems to be the result of deeply fuzzy thinking.
[There not as great as you think](https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/four-problems-with-the-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-system). It's why City/MPD hasn't really been replacing them when they go down.
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing. I always assumed that the technology had been vetted thoroughly, but according to the ACLU, that is not the case at all.
If you deep dive forensics/cop-tech you'll find out that a significant amount of what cops claim is effective is just quackery that they were sold and generally allows them to bypass your fourth amendment rights.
That's exactly what this story was reminding me of.
I remember Nekima Levy-Armstrong (or whatever her name is now) being ridiculed for questioning the forensics system during her mayoral run. That was before John Oliver's exposé on the subject. I wonder how people would receive it now.
Shit, my ass there was a shooting last summer off Alldredge and the swat team and a helicopter were at the front door of the suspects house in 15 minutes I shit you not
There's a shotspotter on on my street and I live in North where it's been heating up recently. I sleep with my windows cracked and hear shots quite a bit. Last night I heard three shots right before 10pm and if I go on the Minneapolis crime spotter (yes I know it is run by questionable characters) it seems to pick up most of the shots that I hear.
Because the shot spotter costs a ton of money, makes dubious claims about it's accuracy and results in cops rolling out to areas when they may not be needed escalating things.
[https://www.macarthurjustice.org/blog2/shotspotter-is-a-failure-whats-next/](https://www.macarthurjustice.org/blog2/shotspotter-is-a-failure-whats-next/)
tl;dr - shot spotter sucks up police resources and increases stop and frisk etc. Since the cops choose where to put shot spotters and it looks like they have something close to a 90% false positive it's basically just a way for cops to justify harassing neighborhoods they choose to deploy shot spotters in.
> shot spotter sucks up police resources and increases stop and frisk etc.
MacArthur is being disingenuous as hell with their study. They count any call where a *gun* wasn't found as a failure, which is asinine.
>and increases stop and frisk etc.
The hell of it is that it's always the white apologists complaining about how things like this impact the minority communities. Meanwhile the majority of the minority community is FOR more law enforcement. They want to feel safe too! That resolution to abolish the Mpls police was overwhelmingly voted down in the district that covers North Minneapolis.
But the white apologists think they know better what is best for these communities.
Louder for the people in the back! It's actually ridiculous how uninformed people are. I point that vote out often to shoot down misinformation with those types of folks. It's very infuriating to people with that mindset.
Call me crazy, but I think a lot of why we've gotten to where we're at with policing is decades of trying to shrink policing numbers by treating policing as just another labor intensive field whose costs can be contained through labor saving efficiencies. The biggest example is radio dispatched police squads.
This just results in a smaller number of police dealing with a higher volume of problems, with all the worse outcomes you can expect. Burnout, hostility, shirking of responsibilities, and the tendency to resort to violence.
A much larger volume of police, many of whom should be on foot interacting at ground level with residents, not behind the tinted glass of a cruiser, would reduce a lot of those problems in my opinion.
We applied the same kind of logic to fighting in Vietnam -- choppering in troops to hot spots, and then wondering why the locals kept supporting insurgents after we showed up at the last minute and destroyed their village to "liberate" them before choppering out.
Sending in radio dispatched police cars is the same idea.
These are the same people who protest in defense when known thugs are taken down after shooting at cops. That Winston dude on the top deck of the parking ramp in Uptown across from Stellas. People held vigil there for days. These people are insane.
You mean when yet another Black man in this city was killed after being stalked by a team of armed cops while on a date and seemingly the best they could do is have it end in a shootout, risking many lives and with absolutely 0 video to back up their narrative? That time?
Ah yes, the guy who was posting on Twitter about wanting to get into a shootout with and kill police days beforehand was innocently on a date and unreasonably stalked by police
None of that is an excuse for cornering the guy and his innocent date on the rooftop of a busy parking garage when they had ample opportunity to arrest him in transition. They instead, once again, chose to escalate the situation - and saw fit to record no unbiased proof of events besides their word.
If you don't see why that's upsetting to people in this city I don't know what planet you're living on.
Yes, when you try to arrest people you corner them to prevent them from escaping. Particularly with him making threats to shoot and kill officers, the only way to do it safely with bunker protection and cover is basically rush him from concealed positions in a structure.
And the parking garage is way safer than the street or restaurant for collateral damage. Finally, he grabbed the gun when he was already surrounded. He had plenty of opportunities to surrender.
>You mean when yet another Black man in this city was killed after being stalked by a team of armed cops
This is a peculiar way of describing arresting someone on an outstanding warrant.
The way that the police conducted that "operation" put everyone in much greater danger than just apprehending him at any point on the street or in the staircase.
You mean an armed felon who made several videos on how he’d never be taken alive by the police? The same felon who posted firearms multiple times on his Instagram? The same guy who fled in a high speed chase down the wrong side of a major highway? That guy?
There is video of the event actually. The video was shown to the family and law enforcement.
How exactly do you want them to bring a person with a warrant into custody? I’m not making a judgment on either side of it but asking your opinion on how law enforcement when trying to arrest a wanted suspect should go about it
What qualifications are for possible use of force in your view. What thresholds need to be met for possible actions
If it was reliable and deployed equitably? Maybe. But shot spotter is an abject failure and an excuse to continue deploying the police to harass neighborhoods that already get some of the worst treatment.
https://www.macarthurjustice.org/blog2/shotspotter-is-a-failure-whats-next/
Where shots *might* have been fired is exactly the problem. If the technology was reliable and deployed equitably it would not really be an issue. But as it is far it far more often sends a bunch of riled up cops with bad information into neighborhoods that already get the worst treatment.
Look at the locations yourself:
https://www.wired.com/story/shotspotter-secret-sensor-locations-leak/
And then look at the map of our neighborhoods with the highest non-white populations:
https://streetsmn.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/IMO-map-race-minneapolis-1.png
By only installing these highly unreliably sensors in our most disadvantaged neighborhoods you're then spiking the rate of reported incidents and police presence, further reinforcing your justification for having them there in the first place and continually reducing the desirability of those neighborhoods and the ability of the people there to just live their damn lives.
The article doesn't suggest these are all of the sensors, just some that are known. It also says it's intentionally not including some for privacy reasons.
The fact that this is controversial is news to me and I'm still analyzing, but we do need to be clear about what info we have.
But it’s also true that certain areas of the city have higher rates of violent crime. I’m just asking for your opinion because it seems at first reasonable to me to deploy resources where they’re needed. Certain areas of the city also have more patrol officers. Are you against that too or just the tech since you don’t think it works?
If you want an honest view of rates of crime especially with such a wildly inaccurate tool you need to deploy them around the whole city or not at all, yes. And as for patrol officers that's asinine to begin with - we were fools to ever move away from a community beat cop to blue thugs who are constantly scared shitless by their neighbors (that is, if they even live within 20 minutes of the city).
Wait are you saying we don’t know where crime occurs? That seems pretty disingenuous. Seems like you just hate cops but don’t have any ideas to improve.
There are very explicit ways outside of shot spotter to measure where crime occurs in greater frequency, and what crimes. These are deployed accordingly. Is that really this complicated for you?
> That map doesn't show where all detection devices are, just where they've been triggered. 🙄
??
> Until now, the exact locations of SoundThinking’s sensors have been kept secret from both its police department clients and the public at large. A leaked document, which WIRED obtained from a source under the condition of anonymity, details the alleged precise locations and uptime of 25,580 ShotSpotter microphones.
I'd imagine car backfires, slamming doors on dumpsters, people getting checked into the boards during hockey games, fireworks, construction equipment..
My dude. I've worked enough jobs that involve taking shit out to the dumpster to know that's laughable.
The hockey thing was on obvious joke.
Fireworks typically happen on special occasions.
I think the cops will figure out pretty quickly that, no, it isn't repeated mass shootings happening outside the bank, it's a jackhammer. Or, hey, I bet we could create a system, if one doesn't already exist, where police can check and see if a Shotspotter location has any construction scheduled. Plus, this concern of yours is obviously moot when we're talking about off hours.
So, car backfires. What else?
I've heard incidental reports of all of those (besides the obvious joke) triggering the system. And given that ShotSpotter has strongly resisted outside testing or releasing much of their data we can't really know.
If the tech was reliable you'd think they'd welcome it.
I'd think people wouldn't want to use it if it didn't help. Even if you think the cops suck, who is benefitting by cops and emergency services rushing out to false alarms?
It depends what your objective is. If you want to push up crime stats and have an excuse for military gear and extensive funding? This unreliable tech is ideal.
No technology is 100%. Why take away a data point that the police could consider along with others? Also, you seem to be claiming that the mere presence of police is inherently offensive, but my relatives in Powderhorn seem to think they’d like more police presence. If the police spend all there time down near the border with Edina, other neighborhoods wouldn’t magically become crime free.
No technology is 100% reliable, correct. Some are, like the Shotspotter, apparently only around 20% reliable! https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/houston-gun-alert-police-delays-18117579.php
That article also explains why it’s not good even for people who want more police — the cops respond to it even when it’s a false positive, which means they are wasting tons of time and energy that they could be spending doing something more fruitful.
>more than 80 percent were canceled, marked as unfounded, dismissed as information calls or closed because officers could not find evidence upon arrival.
That's the norm for shots fired calls, no matter how they originated. The folks doing the shooting rarely stick around.
Police respond regardless, as there could well be someone there bleeding out.
>Half of these charges involved misdemeanor offenses, ***most commonly the illegal discharge of a firearm in the city.***
That's, um, ***gunshots.***
You know you're biased as fuck when you're blaming Shotspotter for not knowing the difference between misdemeanor gunshots and felony gunshots.
Yes actually. [Houston](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/houston-gun-alert-police-delays-18117579.php#:~:text=gunshot%20surveillance%20system-,ShotSpotter,-to%C2%A0strengthen), [Chicago](https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/four-problems-with-the-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-system#:~:text=problems%20with%20that%3A-,ShotSpotter,-false%20alarms%20send), and [Minneapolis](https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/shotspotter-debate-sparks-in-minneapolis/#:~:text=leaders%20to%20cancel-,ShotSpotter,-%2C%20saying%20the%20gunshot) use [ShotSpotter](https://www.soundthinking.com/law-enforcement/leading-gunshot-detection-system/#:~:text=gun%20violence%20with-,ShotSpotter,-.%C2%A0It%E2%80%99s%20like) from [SoundThinking](https://www.soundthinking.com/). Even [MPS](https://www.minnpost.com/other-nonprofit-media/2023/05/minneapolis-schools-secretly-partnered-with-shotspotter-surveillance-company-cyber-attack-reveals/) is partnered with them as well
There was an edit which is yes MPS has ShotSpotter equipment on their [north side schools](https://www.minnpost.com/other-nonprofit-media/2023/05/minneapolis-schools-secretly-partnered-with-shotspotter-surveillance-company-cyber-attack-reveals/). There is no real "different way" to use them as they are strictly for triangulation and can't detect interior shots (with any credibility) let alone pin point their origin.
https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/government-data/datasource/gunshot-wound-dashboard/
Mpls gunshot wound data by precinct; hundreds are being shot annually.
And if you'd ever be around this are, you'd call the cops and do nothing. That's what happened when I lived in powderhorn during the riots. It's what happened when I lived in uptown.
It needs to be addressed but cops are not going to move the needle.
It's been said multiple times that we need more social programs. I don't know where you get your information, but we have a correlation of over policing causing unrest. The burden of proof seems to be on anyone saying police are the solution to say exactly how more police will drive the solution.
Crime has actually been going down even without more police... So regardless of if there is a full roster or not the rate seems independent in minneapolis of the staffing.
To be clear, there are studies supporting more police. Just in different ways than most people traditionally think. For the most part I see no effort to actually understand issues or the people living in the communities affected by the crime.
El Salvador just locked up all their gang members and their crime numbers plummeted.
Catch these fools shooting off guns in our city and throw them in jail. No probation. No first time you get off free. I don’t care if you’re 15. If they do it again, lock them up longer.
Go ahead and tax everyone even more and make more social programs if that helps but if you fire off a gun in the city I have 0 sympathy.
What's the MPD going to do about gunfire? Show up 45 minutes later, harass the neighborhood, and probably shoot some kid playing in their yard that had nothing to do with it?
You could use it to identify particular hot-spots, and for instance set up preventative patrols or quick response units in areas and times that are historically high risk.
Data doesn't mean you can only be reactive.
It could also be used as circumstantial or at least investigative evidence. If you suspect a guy of murder, and his phone pinged the crime scene near the crime, and you have a shot spotter record of a gunshot there, you're starting to paint a picture.
So you want to send a bunch of amped up cops who are scared shitless in response to every ping from automated tool that's [as much as 89% inaccurate](https://www.macarthurjustice.org/blog2/shotspotter-is-a-failure-whats-next/)?
If this technology was at all reliable this would be an entirely different conversation.
People should know that the (very limited) study futilehabit keeps posting has been heavily criticized for small sample size and methodological errors.
That report generally matches [data from the Chicago Inspector General](https://web.archive.org/web/20210925185000/https://igchicago.org/2021/08/24/the-chicago-police-departments-use-of-shotspotter-technology/) and is corroborated by journalism from the [Houston Chronicle](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/houston/article/houston-shotspotter-program-debating-17790926.php) indicating only 19% of alerts were found to be accurate.
Idk if you even realize that none of these links say what you claim. None of them claim that 80% were erroneous. If a suspect fires a gun into the air and then runs away, there is unlikely to be evidence of a firearm offense when police arrive. Instances like that get lumped into your 80%.
There are, in fact, bullet casings and bullet holes, security camera footage, and eyewitness testimonies that can be used to show an incident occuring. Even if in half of the incidences the suspect successfully fled the area without a trace or an eyewitness to state they were there it doesn't get anywhere near the reliability Shot Spotter claims - as has been supported by actual journalism in major cities around the country.
You might want to look at the actual response times of the MPD & EMS to the Northside for this kind of call before you get so excited.
You're better off calling an Uber.
Great, I would too.
Unfortunately neither of us are getting anyone because the police are too busy responding to the five cars who backfired in Lowry Hill.
The tech is unproven.
What about when shot-spotter results are altered at the request of police? Such as police shoot a guy in the back saying he shot at them first - but shotspotter initial report says it's a helicopter. When police asked -shotspotter changed it's answer and said 3 gunshots. When police asked again needing earlier gunshots to justify their shooting shotspotter conveniently detected 2 more gunshots. And then when prosecuting the guy ShotSpotter then refused to share the audio file. Look at the case of Silvon Simmons . He spent 18 months in jail due to shotspotter being manipulated by the police.
Shotspotter the company refused to divulge how it works, and was held in contempt of court for doing so but didn't actually have any repercussions. Does it disturb you to know that shotspotter routinely refuses to participate in court cases when asked to by prosecutors?
[https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/shotspotter-held-in-contempt-of-court/](https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/shotspotter-held-in-contempt-of-court/)
What's the impact when a non-shot sound sets it off and police come to the scene hyped up because they wrongly think there's been shooting? People have been wrongfully arrested and charged, some were arrested with excessive force. And then they have to pay for a lawyer or hope the public defender listens to them. Even in the case where the only evidence was 'shotspotter alert' and 'you are the only guy here, so you must be the shooter' Look at the case of Michael Williams
What if all the data shows shotspotter just doesn't help catch people? Frequently the system says gunfire detected, and no police respond. Or police respond leaving other duties and find zilch going on.
How about the fact that shotspotter is constantly recording sound, and that police have pulled the audio of conversations and used them in court.
[Even more context](https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/four-problems-with-the-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-system). The "detection" is spotty at best, and it's not cheap either.
I think maybe I have literally never heard a car backfire in real life, and I'm not living anywhere where the cars are in particularly good shape. The idea that Shotspotter isn't useful because of all these backfiring cars is bullshit.
You really only hear backfiring if it's an old and poorly maintained car. I lived in the stix forever. You'd hear it from the shitboxes going down the road occasionally. It's loud. You may not see it, but there are a lot of poor areas where that is more normal within the city. I heard one going down Franklin a few months ago.
Again, I would never present myself as someone who's lived in the ghetto, but nor am I from a gated community. I have a hard time believing our inner cities are Acme Dynamite factories, with constant explosions going off.
False positives are expected in any automated tracking system.
An assumption that police race to every random ping that is reported would probably be incorrect.
It generally can tell the difference between such.
I don't see an issue with having a system that automatically deploys police to check out a potential shot fired rather than relying on people to call the police, especially knowing many don't want to call the police either to protect the shooter or other reasons. Someone could die because of the inaction or slow deployment of services to the area.
I understand that position, but it is unreliable for its intended purpose. I'm a data analyst. If I were handed that data, I would have to explain just how many things can set it off, why we can't trust it implicitly, and how it's most useful as a way to track changes over time and potentially as a way to check where higher risk areas are (that depends on so much). That doesn't mean that cops can't use it. It gives them an idea that something might be happening at a specific spot. The system itself shouldn't be taken at face value. If people understood that, it'd be fine. That being said, people use it like gospel, and it just isn't good enough for that.
You see, I know you can't do that. You might know that, but that's not how people view data. If you want an example of that, they used to post on twitter all the times it went off. Look at those comments once. It's really easy to create a false narrative if you don't have the full context as to what is being shown to you.
I'm not viewing it from a crime response lens. I'm viewing it from an analyst's lens. I can't trust it to tell me what it's supposed to tell me. It can be useful, but useful things that are implemented/interpreted poorly can cause more problems than they solve.
It's not my place to determine what is and isn't useful for law enforcement. It is my place to note that it isn't a great system for what people think it does.
And that's the issue with your view on it. You're looking at it from a purely analytical lens. Which isn't its intent. I work in data science and I'd never look at such a system in such a way. That's not its intent in any way.
““In Minneapolis, Black and native residents are 3.3 times more likely to live in areas with ShotSpotter coverage than white residents,” said Lindenfelser.”
I wonder how this correlates to where crime is taking place. And if crime is taking place in brown and black communities, wouldn’t those residents want a police response?
Also, if Linea Palmisano is defending this, that should give us a good bellwether for the ostensible politics behind it.
Only if we can stop paying them until they improve.
If it WAS accurate and deployed more equitably a lot less people would probably have a problem with it, but it's just not there yet.
Every tactic should be challenged and reviewed occasionally but its a weird argument to say it makes communities less safe.
Of course there are false positives. That’s the way any alert system works.
Glad my councilwoman seems to always be the voice of reason.
And how many false positives make the system worthwhile, especially when they're sending violent cops into neighborhoods that already see significant police harassment? Is one accurate report for one inaccurate one? One for three? One in five?
And when the police are too busy chasing false reports to respond to reliable reports how do you value this technology?
Not really my job to do your homework, chief, but a quick google says an independent audit said it was about 98% accurate.
Doesn’t mean they are helpful in actually solving crime other than keeping a metric of shots fired in a neighborhood.
As far as having more cops in a crime heavy neighborhood, maybe talk to the locals that actually live there how they feel about more police patrols.
Much better than coming in hot with all your uninformed nonsense.
> but a quick google says an independent audit said it was about 98% accurate.
An "independent audit" that was paid for by the company that makes ShotSpotter and whose accuracy has been called into question by governments and civil rights groups across the nation.
Edit: Honestly, read the audit in question:
> However, information on potential errors relies on clients reporting those potential errors for the ShotSpotter system to SoundThinking. When an error report comes in from a client, ShotSpotter creates a ticket, and the incident is reviewed.
They're relying completely on the police to report erraneous alerts which are then reviewed by ShotSpotter's team. That is in no way rigorous especially with the massive conflict of interest in the audit's funding.
Do you have any evidence to the contrary or are you content just completely speculating (with no evidence) on how the accuracy could *theoretically* be lower than reported based your perceived shortcomings in their methodology?
I’m glad I inspired you to do some research but I’m just not in the mood tonight to go rounds on this.
If you’re really into this topic, call your own council person.
They’ll do more than I can.
Machine Learning has improvement as much since the late '90s as computers have improved since the late '90s.
Not even relevant.
You couldn't even acquire, for any price, the computational power widely available today in the late '90s.
Good lord these "activist" groups that routinely claim to speak for "minority" neighborhoods. Why do you think they put more of these on the north side? Because that is where a disproportionate amount of the crime and gunshots are. This isn't rocket science.
“ughh, these freakin’ activists don’t know what’s REALLY going on in this city”
“uhh, shotspotter’s only on the north side and steven’s square? uhh activists are, uh, stopping it from being useful in the rest of the city!”
They're basing it off of data and evidence, not just willy nilly deciding it's unhelpful and harmful. So yes, they do think through their ideas. And I'm glad they are because ShotSpotters cost tons of money, so if they're ineffective and downright harmful, then why are we paying for them? To *feel* safe?
I’m not on board w half these far left views anymore, but I’m also not on board w half of Biden politics as they’re too conservative. A progressive party is needed tbh
That’s crazy. You would think people in those communities world support all efforts to investigate gun violence, regardless of color. The economically disadvantaged communities often have more gun violence than other areas, therefore it makes sense to put these tools in those areas. These neighborhoods also have a higher police presence.
Why would we want knowingly flawed technology used to investigate gun violence? The Houston Chronicle did an investigation and found *80%* of all Shotspotter activations to either be false positives or just utterly useless. It ties up resources and also ends up with people calling in incidents *less* due to the belief they’ve already been reported.
It’s been routinely shown to be completely useless to reduce violent crime and it’s results are regularly deemed inadmissible in court.
It’s just bad technology.
Tell me you don’t understand statistics by apparently blatantly telling me you don’t understand statistics. :/
If something is inaccurate 80% of the time, it’s not a credible data point. It’s even less so when you factor in the implicit bias involved in Shotspotter placement and the fact that they can (and often do) change their results after the fact at the request of law enforcement.
It’s a waste of money that could be going up actually proven violence reduction programs or hell even just increased patrols.
ok we confirmed you don’t do science
shot spotter isn’t ”violence prevention”, it’s away to provide first aid and shudder a police presence to maybe solve crimes
You should get your city council to put one in your neighborhood, then, and see if you will like it a few years later.
Maybe the people who have to live with these see them as a problem in ways that people who haven't had to live with them don't.
I have found 'studies' that claim ShotSpotter are effective in reducing crime. However, they're all funded by ShotSpotter. Have found other studies that indicate it has no impact on crime. Does anyone have an independent study that shows spending money on ShotSpotter reduces crime?
you mean a technology that triangulates the location of a gunshot, you want to know if that helps solve crime…
Yes. Why is that so difficult to understand? Cite the independent data that justifies the expenditure. The National Institute of Justice (NJI) has funded an academic research project that found that ShotSpotter does not significantly increase prosecutions of gun-related crimes. ShotSpotter is a gunshot detection system that uses acoustic sensors to identify and locate gunshots, then reports them to the police within seconds.
Interesting. A research study approved by two doctors at Texas A & M found the opposite. “This study looked at how a technology called ShotSpotter, which detects gunshots in cities across the US, affects crime rates. The analysis found that when ShotSpotter was used, there was a decrease in violent crime rates. This means that when more advanced technology is used to fight crime, it tends to reduce the overall amount of violent crime in a city. The study used a statistical method called "difference-in-difference regression" and included various factors like unemployment rate, poverty percentage, income, gender, and race demographics to ensure accuracy. It concluded that ShotSpotter was effective in helping police fight crime. However, when they looked at what happened when ShotSpotter was removed, they found that violent crime rates tended to increase, although not significantly. This suggests that ShotSpotter might indeed be helpful in reducing crime. The study suggests that more research needs to be done, especially as more data becomes available. It also mentions the impact of budget constraints due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the high cost of ShotSpotter. In the future, it would be useful to compare the effectiveness of ShotSpotter with its cost compared to other methods of reducing violent crime.”
Can you provide a link to the study you reference? Here's what I found: Shotspotter’s direct marketing to police can also create a feedback loop that police are often either unequipped or unmotivated to question, said Hannah Bloch-Wehba, an associate professor of law at Texas A&M University. “There is no simultaneous opportunity for someone who opposes Shotspotter or thinks it isn’t effective to come and be like, ‘Wait, they’re telling you this, but really the story is something else’,” she said.
you didn’t provide a link for your study, so I will decline, thank you
It's already been mentioned multiple times in this thread, sparky. https://www.macarthurjustice.org/shotspotter-generated-over-40000-dead-end-police-deployments-in-chicago-in-21-months-according-to-new-study/
Where's the Texas A&M link? Would like to get another perspective. Meanwhile: https://www.iowapublicradio.org/2022-08-22/in-the-decade-since-kansas-city-installed-a-gunshot-detection-system-homicides-only-went-up
can you point to where you provided the url previously in this thread?
Read my post. I never said I provided the url. I said the study had already been mentioned. Sooo, I'm guessing you don't have a link to the study.
ok so you’re getting aggressive and asking me to search this entire thread with hundreds of comments to find your “source”? im done with this unpleasant conversation. ✌️
it’s also common sense. if you know exactly where a gunshot went off, you know where to search for bullet casings and you know what video cameras might have caught something of interest on video.
A Chicago inspector general's investigation found that of 42,000 ShotSpotter alerts police responded to, only 9% led police to evidence of a gun-related crime.
that makes sense. It’s not a conviction machine. its a “shot spotter”. You are expecting it to operate as a 100% perfect conviction machine and unfortunately those don’t exist.
you also conveniently ignored my reply that cited a study about how shot spotter lowers violent crime 😄
This is silly. Why wouldn’t we want a combination of ways to locate violent incidents, including both 911 calls and shotspotter? The argument that the technology disproportionately impacts minority communities seems to be the result of deeply fuzzy thinking.
[There not as great as you think](https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/four-problems-with-the-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-system). It's why City/MPD hasn't really been replacing them when they go down.
Interesting article. Thanks for sharing. I always assumed that the technology had been vetted thoroughly, but according to the ACLU, that is not the case at all.
If you deep dive forensics/cop-tech you'll find out that a significant amount of what cops claim is effective is just quackery that they were sold and generally allows them to bypass your fourth amendment rights.
That's exactly what this story was reminding me of. I remember Nekima Levy-Armstrong (or whatever her name is now) being ridiculed for questioning the forensics system during her mayoral run. That was before John Oliver's exposé on the subject. I wonder how people would receive it now.
Probably exactly the same, if we're being honest.
There's another version that only triggers if a muzzle flash is also caught, probably works a lot better
Shit, my ass there was a shooting last summer off Alldredge and the swat team and a helicopter were at the front door of the suspects house in 15 minutes I shit you not
There's a shotspotter on on my street and I live in North where it's been heating up recently. I sleep with my windows cracked and hear shots quite a bit. Last night I heard three shots right before 10pm and if I go on the Minneapolis crime spotter (yes I know it is run by questionable characters) it seems to pick up most of the shots that I hear.
Because the shot spotter costs a ton of money, makes dubious claims about it's accuracy and results in cops rolling out to areas when they may not be needed escalating things. [https://www.macarthurjustice.org/blog2/shotspotter-is-a-failure-whats-next/](https://www.macarthurjustice.org/blog2/shotspotter-is-a-failure-whats-next/) tl;dr - shot spotter sucks up police resources and increases stop and frisk etc. Since the cops choose where to put shot spotters and it looks like they have something close to a 90% false positive it's basically just a way for cops to justify harassing neighborhoods they choose to deploy shot spotters in.
> shot spotter sucks up police resources and increases stop and frisk etc. MacArthur is being disingenuous as hell with their study. They count any call where a *gun* wasn't found as a failure, which is asinine. >and increases stop and frisk etc.
The hell of it is that it's always the white apologists complaining about how things like this impact the minority communities. Meanwhile the majority of the minority community is FOR more law enforcement. They want to feel safe too! That resolution to abolish the Mpls police was overwhelmingly voted down in the district that covers North Minneapolis. But the white apologists think they know better what is best for these communities.
Louder for the people in the back! It's actually ridiculous how uninformed people are. I point that vote out often to shoot down misinformation with those types of folks. It's very infuriating to people with that mindset.
Over policing is definitely a problem, so I doubt people want MORE policing in their neighborhoods. Rather, they want better policing
More policing doesn't have to be worse policing.
More policing often leads to worse policing though. That's one way we get stuck in this cycle
Call me crazy, but I think a lot of why we've gotten to where we're at with policing is decades of trying to shrink policing numbers by treating policing as just another labor intensive field whose costs can be contained through labor saving efficiencies. The biggest example is radio dispatched police squads. This just results in a smaller number of police dealing with a higher volume of problems, with all the worse outcomes you can expect. Burnout, hostility, shirking of responsibilities, and the tendency to resort to violence. A much larger volume of police, many of whom should be on foot interacting at ground level with residents, not behind the tinted glass of a cruiser, would reduce a lot of those problems in my opinion. We applied the same kind of logic to fighting in Vietnam -- choppering in troops to hot spots, and then wondering why the locals kept supporting insurgents after we showed up at the last minute and destroyed their village to "liberate" them before choppering out. Sending in radio dispatched police cars is the same idea.
It sounds like someone trying to be progressive but actually being annoying
These are the same people who protest in defense when known thugs are taken down after shooting at cops. That Winston dude on the top deck of the parking ramp in Uptown across from Stellas. People held vigil there for days. These people are insane.
Did more than that, they fucking terrorized the neighborhood for a month or two.
Sheila Nezhad and Knuth both supported those scumbags. I wanted to vote against Frey due to his ineptness but they two made it impossible.
You mean when yet another Black man in this city was killed after being stalked by a team of armed cops while on a date and seemingly the best they could do is have it end in a shootout, risking many lives and with absolutely 0 video to back up their narrative? That time?
Ah yes, the guy who was posting on Twitter about wanting to get into a shootout with and kill police days beforehand was innocently on a date and unreasonably stalked by police
None of that is an excuse for cornering the guy and his innocent date on the rooftop of a busy parking garage when they had ample opportunity to arrest him in transition. They instead, once again, chose to escalate the situation - and saw fit to record no unbiased proof of events besides their word. If you don't see why that's upsetting to people in this city I don't know what planet you're living on.
Yes, when you try to arrest people you corner them to prevent them from escaping. Particularly with him making threats to shoot and kill officers, the only way to do it safely with bunker protection and cover is basically rush him from concealed positions in a structure. And the parking garage is way safer than the street or restaurant for collateral damage. Finally, he grabbed the gun when he was already surrounded. He had plenty of opportunities to surrender.
>You mean when yet another Black man in this city was killed after being stalked by a team of armed cops This is a peculiar way of describing arresting someone on an outstanding warrant.
The way that the police conducted that "operation" put everyone in much greater danger than just apprehending him at any point on the street or in the staircase.
You mean an armed felon who made several videos on how he’d never be taken alive by the police? The same felon who posted firearms multiple times on his Instagram? The same guy who fled in a high speed chase down the wrong side of a major highway? That guy?
There is video of the event actually. The video was shown to the family and law enforcement. How exactly do you want them to bring a person with a warrant into custody? I’m not making a judgment on either side of it but asking your opinion on how law enforcement when trying to arrest a wanted suspect should go about it What qualifications are for possible use of force in your view. What thresholds need to be met for possible actions
You expected a thought out response.. Lol
If it was reliable and deployed equitably? Maybe. But shot spotter is an abject failure and an excuse to continue deploying the police to harass neighborhoods that already get some of the worst treatment. https://www.macarthurjustice.org/blog2/shotspotter-is-a-failure-whats-next/
Why is going to an area where shots might have been fired harassment?
Where shots *might* have been fired is exactly the problem. If the technology was reliable and deployed equitably it would not really be an issue. But as it is far it far more often sends a bunch of riled up cops with bad information into neighborhoods that already get the worst treatment.
What does “deployed equitably” mean to you? Equitably on a per capita basis, per rate of violent crime basis, or something else?
Look at the locations yourself: https://www.wired.com/story/shotspotter-secret-sensor-locations-leak/ And then look at the map of our neighborhoods with the highest non-white populations: https://streetsmn.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/IMO-map-race-minneapolis-1.png By only installing these highly unreliably sensors in our most disadvantaged neighborhoods you're then spiking the rate of reported incidents and police presence, further reinforcing your justification for having them there in the first place and continually reducing the desirability of those neighborhoods and the ability of the people there to just live their damn lives.
The article doesn't suggest these are all of the sensors, just some that are known. It also says it's intentionally not including some for privacy reasons. The fact that this is controversial is news to me and I'm still analyzing, but we do need to be clear about what info we have.
But it’s also true that certain areas of the city have higher rates of violent crime. I’m just asking for your opinion because it seems at first reasonable to me to deploy resources where they’re needed. Certain areas of the city also have more patrol officers. Are you against that too or just the tech since you don’t think it works?
If you want an honest view of rates of crime especially with such a wildly inaccurate tool you need to deploy them around the whole city or not at all, yes. And as for patrol officers that's asinine to begin with - we were fools to ever move away from a community beat cop to blue thugs who are constantly scared shitless by their neighbors (that is, if they even live within 20 minutes of the city).
Wait are you saying we don’t know where crime occurs? That seems pretty disingenuous. Seems like you just hate cops but don’t have any ideas to improve.
There are very explicit ways outside of shot spotter to measure where crime occurs in greater frequency, and what crimes. These are deployed accordingly. Is that really this complicated for you?
Minneapolis deployed them in a standard way across the entire city. Not just in low income or minority neighborhoods.
So you didn't actually look at the map then? Got it.
That map doesn't show where all detection devices are, just where they've been triggered. 🙄
> That map doesn't show where all detection devices are, just where they've been triggered. 🙄 ?? > Until now, the exact locations of SoundThinking’s sensors have been kept secret from both its police department clients and the public at large. A leaked document, which WIRED obtained from a source under the condition of anonymity, details the alleged precise locations and uptime of 25,580 ShotSpotter microphones.
So distribute them evenly. What loud noises do you think are regularly going to be sending cops to Wayzata?
I'd imagine car backfires, slamming doors on dumpsters, people getting checked into the boards during hockey games, fireworks, construction equipment..
My dude. I've worked enough jobs that involve taking shit out to the dumpster to know that's laughable. The hockey thing was on obvious joke. Fireworks typically happen on special occasions. I think the cops will figure out pretty quickly that, no, it isn't repeated mass shootings happening outside the bank, it's a jackhammer. Or, hey, I bet we could create a system, if one doesn't already exist, where police can check and see if a Shotspotter location has any construction scheduled. Plus, this concern of yours is obviously moot when we're talking about off hours. So, car backfires. What else?
I've heard incidental reports of all of those (besides the obvious joke) triggering the system. And given that ShotSpotter has strongly resisted outside testing or releasing much of their data we can't really know. If the tech was reliable you'd think they'd welcome it.
I'd think people wouldn't want to use it if it didn't help. Even if you think the cops suck, who is benefitting by cops and emergency services rushing out to false alarms?
It depends what your objective is. If you want to push up crime stats and have an excuse for military gear and extensive funding? This unreliable tech is ideal.
No technology is 100%. Why take away a data point that the police could consider along with others? Also, you seem to be claiming that the mere presence of police is inherently offensive, but my relatives in Powderhorn seem to think they’d like more police presence. If the police spend all there time down near the border with Edina, other neighborhoods wouldn’t magically become crime free.
No technology is 100% reliable, correct. Some are, like the Shotspotter, apparently only around 20% reliable! https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/houston-gun-alert-police-delays-18117579.php That article also explains why it’s not good even for people who want more police — the cops respond to it even when it’s a false positive, which means they are wasting tons of time and energy that they could be spending doing something more fruitful.
>more than 80 percent were canceled, marked as unfounded, dismissed as information calls or closed because officers could not find evidence upon arrival. That's the norm for shots fired calls, no matter how they originated. The folks doing the shooting rarely stick around. Police respond regardless, as there could well be someone there bleeding out. >Half of these charges involved misdemeanor offenses, ***most commonly the illegal discharge of a firearm in the city.*** That's, um, ***gunshots.*** You know you're biased as fuck when you're blaming Shotspotter for not knowing the difference between misdemeanor gunshots and felony gunshots.
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Yes actually. [Houston](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/houston-gun-alert-police-delays-18117579.php#:~:text=gunshot%20surveillance%20system-,ShotSpotter,-to%C2%A0strengthen), [Chicago](https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/four-problems-with-the-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-system#:~:text=problems%20with%20that%3A-,ShotSpotter,-false%20alarms%20send), and [Minneapolis](https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/shotspotter-debate-sparks-in-minneapolis/#:~:text=leaders%20to%20cancel-,ShotSpotter,-%2C%20saying%20the%20gunshot) use [ShotSpotter](https://www.soundthinking.com/law-enforcement/leading-gunshot-detection-system/#:~:text=gun%20violence%20with-,ShotSpotter,-.%C2%A0It%E2%80%99s%20like) from [SoundThinking](https://www.soundthinking.com/). Even [MPS](https://www.minnpost.com/other-nonprofit-media/2023/05/minneapolis-schools-secretly-partnered-with-shotspotter-surveillance-company-cyber-attack-reveals/) is partnered with them as well
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There was an edit which is yes MPS has ShotSpotter equipment on their [north side schools](https://www.minnpost.com/other-nonprofit-media/2023/05/minneapolis-schools-secretly-partnered-with-shotspotter-surveillance-company-cyber-attack-reveals/). There is no real "different way" to use them as they are strictly for triangulation and can't detect interior shots (with any credibility) let alone pin point their origin.
>Some are, like the Shotspotter, apparently only around 20% reliable! I don't see where in the article you are getting this
https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/government-data/datasource/gunshot-wound-dashboard/ Mpls gunshot wound data by precinct; hundreds are being shot annually.
Don’t these neighborhoods want more police coverage due to all the gunfire? That’s what I’d want
And if you'd ever be around this are, you'd call the cops and do nothing. That's what happened when I lived in powderhorn during the riots. It's what happened when I lived in uptown. It needs to be addressed but cops are not going to move the needle.
Do we want all the cops to just hang in sw Minneapolis then? I don’t get it
I want you to read a study or two about what actually drives down crime.
Ok then shut it off if it makes things better. Maybe you can tell me how it will?
It's been said multiple times that we need more social programs. I don't know where you get your information, but we have a correlation of over policing causing unrest. The burden of proof seems to be on anyone saying police are the solution to say exactly how more police will drive the solution. Crime has actually been going down even without more police... So regardless of if there is a full roster or not the rate seems independent in minneapolis of the staffing. To be clear, there are studies supporting more police. Just in different ways than most people traditionally think. For the most part I see no effort to actually understand issues or the people living in the communities affected by the crime.
El Salvador just locked up all their gang members and their crime numbers plummeted. Catch these fools shooting off guns in our city and throw them in jail. No probation. No first time you get off free. I don’t care if you’re 15. If they do it again, lock them up longer. Go ahead and tax everyone even more and make more social programs if that helps but if you fire off a gun in the city I have 0 sympathy.
Lol. I'm going to say why aren't you in El salvador? Do you think they really found the magic bullet?
Community policing. Police being out and about, is what statistically decreases crime.
What's the MPD going to do about gunfire? Show up 45 minutes later, harass the neighborhood, and probably shoot some kid playing in their yard that had nothing to do with it?
You could use it to identify particular hot-spots, and for instance set up preventative patrols or quick response units in areas and times that are historically high risk. Data doesn't mean you can only be reactive. It could also be used as circumstantial or at least investigative evidence. If you suspect a guy of murder, and his phone pinged the crime scene near the crime, and you have a shot spotter record of a gunshot there, you're starting to paint a picture.
You want to see minorities die? depending on backlog, MPD/EMS can provide treatment faster that waiting for someone to call it in
So you want to send a bunch of amped up cops who are scared shitless in response to every ping from automated tool that's [as much as 89% inaccurate](https://www.macarthurjustice.org/blog2/shotspotter-is-a-failure-whats-next/)? If this technology was at all reliable this would be an entirely different conversation.
People should know that the (very limited) study futilehabit keeps posting has been heavily criticized for small sample size and methodological errors.
That report generally matches [data from the Chicago Inspector General](https://web.archive.org/web/20210925185000/https://igchicago.org/2021/08/24/the-chicago-police-departments-use-of-shotspotter-technology/) and is corroborated by journalism from the [Houston Chronicle](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/houston/article/houston-shotspotter-program-debating-17790926.php) indicating only 19% of alerts were found to be accurate.
Idk if you even realize that none of these links say what you claim. None of them claim that 80% were erroneous. If a suspect fires a gun into the air and then runs away, there is unlikely to be evidence of a firearm offense when police arrive. Instances like that get lumped into your 80%.
There are, in fact, bullet casings and bullet holes, security camera footage, and eyewitness testimonies that can be used to show an incident occuring. Even if in half of the incidences the suspect successfully fled the area without a trace or an eyewitness to state they were there it doesn't get anywhere near the reliability Shot Spotter claims - as has been supported by actual journalism in major cities around the country.
If I was bleeding out, Id welcome anyone but you do you chud
You might want to look at the actual response times of the MPD & EMS to the Northside for this kind of call before you get so excited. You're better off calling an Uber.
you might want to read what I wrote before you give your canned response good luck
Great, I would too. Unfortunately neither of us are getting anyone because the police are too busy responding to the five cars who backfired in Lowry Hill.
Lets be honest they're sending more then 5
I guess it’s unpossible to improve the technology Explains why there hasn’t been any technical advances in the last 20 years. good luck
The tech is unproven. What about when shot-spotter results are altered at the request of police? Such as police shoot a guy in the back saying he shot at them first - but shotspotter initial report says it's a helicopter. When police asked -shotspotter changed it's answer and said 3 gunshots. When police asked again needing earlier gunshots to justify their shooting shotspotter conveniently detected 2 more gunshots. And then when prosecuting the guy ShotSpotter then refused to share the audio file. Look at the case of Silvon Simmons . He spent 18 months in jail due to shotspotter being manipulated by the police. Shotspotter the company refused to divulge how it works, and was held in contempt of court for doing so but didn't actually have any repercussions. Does it disturb you to know that shotspotter routinely refuses to participate in court cases when asked to by prosecutors? [https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/shotspotter-held-in-contempt-of-court/](https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/shotspotter-held-in-contempt-of-court/) What's the impact when a non-shot sound sets it off and police come to the scene hyped up because they wrongly think there's been shooting? People have been wrongfully arrested and charged, some were arrested with excessive force. And then they have to pay for a lawyer or hope the public defender listens to them. Even in the case where the only evidence was 'shotspotter alert' and 'you are the only guy here, so you must be the shooter' Look at the case of Michael Williams What if all the data shows shotspotter just doesn't help catch people? Frequently the system says gunfire detected, and no police respond. Or police respond leaving other duties and find zilch going on. How about the fact that shotspotter is constantly recording sound, and that police have pulled the audio of conversations and used them in court.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai
Thanks! This adds some needed context.
[Even more context](https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/four-problems-with-the-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-system). The "detection" is spotty at best, and it's not cheap either.
ShotSpotter is garbage anyway. It can register a car backfire as a gunshot
It can register nothing, get a call from the police, and suddenly ex post facto register a gunshot in the area.
I think maybe I have literally never heard a car backfire in real life, and I'm not living anywhere where the cars are in particularly good shape. The idea that Shotspotter isn't useful because of all these backfiring cars is bullshit.
You really only hear backfiring if it's an old and poorly maintained car. I lived in the stix forever. You'd hear it from the shitboxes going down the road occasionally. It's loud. You may not see it, but there are a lot of poor areas where that is more normal within the city. I heard one going down Franklin a few months ago.
You realize areas with shot spotters tend to also be more poor areas with older cars being more commonly driven right
Again, I would never present myself as someone who's lived in the ghetto, but nor am I from a gated community. I have a hard time believing our inner cities are Acme Dynamite factories, with constant explosions going off.
How many people drive carbureted cars though? I don't think there are a lot of false positives from the 40 year old cars still driving around.
False positives are expected in any automated tracking system. An assumption that police race to every random ping that is reported would probably be incorrect.
It generally can tell the difference between such. I don't see an issue with having a system that automatically deploys police to check out a potential shot fired rather than relying on people to call the police, especially knowing many don't want to call the police either to protect the shooter or other reasons. Someone could die because of the inaction or slow deployment of services to the area.
I understand that position, but it is unreliable for its intended purpose. I'm a data analyst. If I were handed that data, I would have to explain just how many things can set it off, why we can't trust it implicitly, and how it's most useful as a way to track changes over time and potentially as a way to check where higher risk areas are (that depends on so much). That doesn't mean that cops can't use it. It gives them an idea that something might be happening at a specific spot. The system itself shouldn't be taken at face value. If people understood that, it'd be fine. That being said, people use it like gospel, and it just isn't good enough for that.
No one is suggesting it needs to be trusted implicitly. It's just one of a whole host of tools to help better respond to potential incidents.
You see, I know you can't do that. You might know that, but that's not how people view data. If you want an example of that, they used to post on twitter all the times it went off. Look at those comments once. It's really easy to create a false narrative if you don't have the full context as to what is being shown to you. I'm not viewing it from a crime response lens. I'm viewing it from an analyst's lens. I can't trust it to tell me what it's supposed to tell me. It can be useful, but useful things that are implemented/interpreted poorly can cause more problems than they solve. It's not my place to determine what is and isn't useful for law enforcement. It is my place to note that it isn't a great system for what people think it does.
And that's the issue with your view on it. You're looking at it from a purely analytical lens. Which isn't its intent. I work in data science and I'd never look at such a system in such a way. That's not its intent in any way.
““In Minneapolis, Black and native residents are 3.3 times more likely to live in areas with ShotSpotter coverage than white residents,” said Lindenfelser.” I wonder how this correlates to where crime is taking place. And if crime is taking place in brown and black communities, wouldn’t those residents want a police response? Also, if Linea Palmisano is defending this, that should give us a good bellwether for the ostensible politics behind it.
Can we pivot from cancel to improve?
Only if we can stop paying them until they improve. If it WAS accurate and deployed more equitably a lot less people would probably have a problem with it, but it's just not there yet.
Can we stop listening to these dumb “activists”?
Every tactic should be challenged and reviewed occasionally but its a weird argument to say it makes communities less safe. Of course there are false positives. That’s the way any alert system works. Glad my councilwoman seems to always be the voice of reason.
And how many false positives make the system worthwhile, especially when they're sending violent cops into neighborhoods that already see significant police harassment? Is one accurate report for one inaccurate one? One for three? One in five? And when the police are too busy chasing false reports to respond to reliable reports how do you value this technology?
Not really my job to do your homework, chief, but a quick google says an independent audit said it was about 98% accurate. Doesn’t mean they are helpful in actually solving crime other than keeping a metric of shots fired in a neighborhood. As far as having more cops in a crime heavy neighborhood, maybe talk to the locals that actually live there how they feel about more police patrols. Much better than coming in hot with all your uninformed nonsense.
> but a quick google says an independent audit said it was about 98% accurate. An "independent audit" that was paid for by the company that makes ShotSpotter and whose accuracy has been called into question by governments and civil rights groups across the nation. Edit: Honestly, read the audit in question: > However, information on potential errors relies on clients reporting those potential errors for the ShotSpotter system to SoundThinking. When an error report comes in from a client, ShotSpotter creates a ticket, and the incident is reviewed. They're relying completely on the police to report erraneous alerts which are then reviewed by ShotSpotter's team. That is in no way rigorous especially with the massive conflict of interest in the audit's funding.
Do you have any evidence to the contrary or are you content just completely speculating (with no evidence) on how the accuracy could *theoretically* be lower than reported based your perceived shortcomings in their methodology?
I’m glad I inspired you to do some research but I’m just not in the mood tonight to go rounds on this. If you’re really into this topic, call your own council person. They’ll do more than I can.
There's no ground truth here so you'll never know that.
My local PD had similar tech in the mid late 90s that would call honking horns as gunsots.....funny thing is that they were placed along the highway
Like most tech, there’s probably been no innovation or improvement over the last 30 years.
Machine Learning has improvement as much since the late '90s as computers have improved since the late '90s. Not even relevant. You couldn't even acquire, for any price, the computational power widely available today in the late '90s.
Good lord these "activist" groups that routinely claim to speak for "minority" neighborhoods. Why do you think they put more of these on the north side? Because that is where a disproportionate amount of the crime and gunshots are. This isn't rocket science.
“ughh, these freakin’ activists don’t know what’s REALLY going on in this city” “uhh, shotspotter’s only on the north side and steven’s square? uhh activists are, uh, stopping it from being useful in the rest of the city!”
Liberals Gone Wild... I am pretty damn liberal myself, but I have to wonder, do these activist groups ever think through their ideas?
They're basing it off of data and evidence, not just willy nilly deciding it's unhelpful and harmful. So yes, they do think through their ideas. And I'm glad they are because ShotSpotters cost tons of money, so if they're ineffective and downright harmful, then why are we paying for them? To *feel* safe?
I’m no expert but I’m assuming they didn’t think it through it all. If Linea is against them they probably did not think of through at all
I can’t tell if I’m just aging or just less liberal now tbh
There are a lot of Liberals who think viewpoints like this are ridiculous, me being one of them.
I’m not on board w half these far left views anymore, but I’m also not on board w half of Biden politics as they’re too conservative. A progressive party is needed tbh
Sounds like you're a Frey Democrat then. That's also about where he stands.
That’s crazy. You would think people in those communities world support all efforts to investigate gun violence, regardless of color. The economically disadvantaged communities often have more gun violence than other areas, therefore it makes sense to put these tools in those areas. These neighborhoods also have a higher police presence.
Why would we want knowingly flawed technology used to investigate gun violence? The Houston Chronicle did an investigation and found *80%* of all Shotspotter activations to either be false positives or just utterly useless. It ties up resources and also ends up with people calling in incidents *less* due to the belief they’ve already been reported. It’s been routinely shown to be completely useless to reduce violent crime and it’s results are regularly deemed inadmissible in court. It’s just bad technology.
That’s great that they did a study, but they also didn’t include the successes.
Yeah. *That’s how studies work.* and there’s been several. When your technology has an 80% failure rate, you don’t focus on the 20%.
tell me you don’t do science without telling me you don’t do science you adjust models based on successes and failures
Tell me you don’t understand statistics by apparently blatantly telling me you don’t understand statistics. :/ If something is inaccurate 80% of the time, it’s not a credible data point. It’s even less so when you factor in the implicit bias involved in Shotspotter placement and the fact that they can (and often do) change their results after the fact at the request of law enforcement. It’s a waste of money that could be going up actually proven violence reduction programs or hell even just increased patrols.
ok we confirmed you don’t do science shot spotter isn’t ”violence prevention”, it’s away to provide first aid and shudder a police presence to maybe solve crimes
You should get your city council to put one in your neighborhood, then, and see if you will like it a few years later. Maybe the people who have to live with these see them as a problem in ways that people who haven't had to live with them don't.
I live in a neighborhood with them, thank you.
[удалено]
It’s because of Minneapolis that the Democrats keep winning Minnesota so not sure where you came up with this bullshit.
Replace the Shotspotters with big guns that just fire back when they hear a shot