By NEW BEDFORD — After a number of legislators sent a letter to U.S. Inspector General Joseph Cuffari questioning the “accuracy and effectiveness” of the gunshot detection system known as ShotSpotter, a group of Massachusetts police chiefs — including New Bedford’s — penned a letter of their own urging support for the technology.
In their letter to the inspector general, U.S. Senators Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) wrote: “We request that the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigate DHS’s spending of taxpayer dollars on ShotSpotter, including potential violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal financial assistance from discriminating based on race, color, and national origin.”
The legislators noted that communities receive funding through the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grant program from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “to deploy the ShotSpotter system” from company SoundThinking.
The letter goes on to cite a 2022 Associated Press report that “found the system can miss live gunfire right under its microphones, or misclassify the sounds of fireworks or cars backfiring as gunshots,” and also that SoundThinking’s “methods for identifying gunshots” sometimes involves human discernment by “ShotSpotter employees” rather than technology.
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“Employees can and do modify the location or number of shots fired at the request of police, according to court records. And in the past, city dispatchers or police themselves could also make some of these changes,” the letter reads, going on to cite another finding that “more than 90% of ShotSpotter alerts lead police to find no evidence to corroborate gunfire….”
“But beyond the question of ShotSpotter’s effectiveness are concerns about discrimination, civil rights violations, and the system’s impact on policing practices and minority communities,” the letter continues. According to the legislators, one analysis found “nearly 70 percent of people who live in a neighborhood with at least one SoundThinking sensor identified…as either Black or Latino.
“Almost three-quarters of those neighborhoods were majority nonwhite, with the average household earning slightly more than $50,000 annually.”
According to an Oct. 17, 2011 release from the company — at the time when New Bedford was adopting ShotSpotter — the technology was to be deployed “in areas with high incidents of gunfire.”
What did the police leaders have to say?
“Let us be clear: ShotSpotter is effective, accurate, and welcomed in our communities, and has the proven capability to save lives and help us effectively respond to gun violence,” the group of 11 police leaders submitted in their letter addressed to the legislators and shared with the press earlier this week, calling the claims “misleading and false information.”
“ShotSpotter helps our officers respond quickly to shooting incidents. Indeed, the system alerts us to gunfire in our coverage areas within 60 seconds, increasing our ability to save victims’ lives, collect evidence, and locate and arrest assailants. When every second matters, the immediacy of that information is crucial to responding patrols,” the response letter continues.
“We respectfully submit that the best judges of the efficacy, fairness, and value of ShotSpotter are not distant elected officials in Washington, but, rather, those of us on the ground locally….”
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The signees of that letter are police chiefs Paul Oliveira (New Bedford), Paul Strong (Everett), David Pratt (Holyoke), Keith Houghton (Chelsea), David Callahan (Revere); Interim Chief Paul Saucier (Worcester), Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox, Capt. Matt Hill on behalf of Pittsfield Chief Thomas Darley, Cambridge Police Commissioner Christine Elow, Springfield Police Superintendent Lawrence Akers, Lawrence Police Provisional Chief Melix Bonilla, and former Boston, NYPD and LAPD Commissioner William Bratton.
ShotSpotter and SouthCoast
New Bedford Police Department first adopted the ShotSpotter system in 2011, according to the SoundThinking website. In terms of how much it costs the city — if anything — or providing activation data, NBPD Media Relations Specialist Holly Huntoon said that information would not be available in time for this publishing. Oliveira was also invited to comment, via Huntoon, but did not. New Bedford Public Information Officer Jon Darling said ShotSpotter was under the police budget.
In an April 20, 2018 Herald News report, detailing Fall River’s discontinuance of ShotSpotter, then-Fall River mayor Jasiel Correia II said, “We are not interested in paying $120,000 a year … for something that works less than 50 percent of the time.”
Get some background: After too many shots missed, ShotSpotter deal officially end
“The company had asked for the chance to bring it up to par where we needed it to be, but we saw little improvement with it in the past eight or nine months,” then-Fall River police chief Al Dupere told The Herald News.
The article also notes the Feb. 14, 2018 shooting death of Maurice Timberlake in Fall River, during which Dupere said ShotSpotter missed “all the gunshots.”
