Researchers at Cleveland State University on Friday released their 185-page report reviewing Cleveland police’s use of ShotSpotter. The release came at a hearing before Cleveland City Council’s Public Safety Committee.
Researchers analyzed 87,000 ShotSpotter alerts, observed how officers used the technology in practice and conducted hundreds of surveys of police and city residents.
The city-commissioned report found the technology’s use was a mixed bag. On one hand, ShotSpotter was reliable in identifying when and where a gun was fired; it helped officers arrive on scene faster; it detected gunfire that wouldn’t have otherwise been reported; and police were not abusing the technology in a way that violates the Fourth Amendment.
On the other hand, ShotSpotter did not function as a crime deterrent, rarely helped investigations, diverted police attention from other calls and didn’t integrate well with other department technology.
“ShotSpotter does not directly reduce crime, but it does help police respond to confirmed incidents of gunfire,” said Stephanie Kent, a Cleveland State University professor who co-authored the report.
The report did not make a recommendation as to whether the city should continue using ShotSpotter. Cleveland has an agreement with ShotSpotter to use the technology though at least April.
The report’s findings are consistent with acleveland.com and Plain Dealer investigation published earlier this year. The analysis found that, among 2024’s firearm homicides, when ShotSpotter alerted police to a homicide, the case was no more likely to be solved than other fatal shootings were overall.
ShotSpotter representatives, who attended the hearing, largely agreed with the report’s findings. However, they pushed back on the researchers’ assertion that the technology did not integrate well into the city’s existing services.
Cleveland police have long asserted gunshot detection technology saves lives, and they provided 53 examples that they say prove that point.
Researchers, who did not have access to medical records, were not able to determine whether lives were saved because of ShotSpotter, and they noted in nearly all of those 53 cases that 911 calls also reported the shootings.
However, researchers did find ShotSpotter helped get first responders on scene more quickly: 911 calls were typically made four minutes after the ShotSpotter alert.
“We believe (ShotSpotter) really aided in the survivability of those individuals,” said Cleveland Safety Director Wayne Drummond. “From an administrative standpoint, this was money well spent.”
Cleveland spends $914,250 per year on ShotSpotter. In 2022, much of the funding to expand ShotSpotter came from the American Rescue Plan Act.
If the city wants to continue paying for the technology, the money will have to come from the city’s general fund, said Public Safety Committee Chairman Mike Polensek.
“We have to look at the financial aspect of this because I think we all know we’re not going to get any additional help out of Washington, D.C. We’re not going to get any additional help out of Columbus,” Polensek said. “We have to make sure we’re being smart.”
The report highlighted a deeper issue that Cleveland police say they are beginning to rectify. The department has only 1,151 of the 1,350 officers budgeted by the city, officials said.
Because of the relatively low staffing level — in 2001 the department had more than 1,900 officers — and the increased number of high-priority calls generated by ShotSpotter alerts, officers were being spread thin, researchers found.
Between 2023 and 2024, ShotSpotter generated an average of 21 alerts per day, which police told researchers was too much for them to handle at their staffing levels.
“It is vital that there are (more) officers and that they have the staffing to respond to these,” said Rachel Lovell, a Cleveland State University professor and a co-author of the report.
Though 21 alerts per day is only a fraction of the traffic Cleveland dispatchers receive — last Saturday alone, Cleveland police received 600 calls for service — ShotSpotter notifications are classified as the highest priority. Because of that, officers treat these types of alerts as “life-or-death” situations, Lovell said.
Because of this strain on resources, researchers said response times for other crimes is increasing.
Cleveland is considering replacing ShotSpotter with a similar technology made by Flock Safety, which makes the city’s automated license-plate readers.
Legislation authorizing the switch to a different company has already been submitted. It came just weeks after former Councilman Kerry McCormack left his position for a job at Flock Safety.
McCormack told a reporter Friday that he has promised to avoid speaking with city officials about anything related to Flock Safety for a year, and he did not discuss the legislation with city officials before he left office.
“I had no discussion with the city about this at all,” McCormack said.
Despite McCormack’s assurances, Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer called for the city to conduct its typical “request for proposal,” a process where companies submit formal bids and are selected based on a competitive process.
“I think we need to do everything by the book,” Maurer said. “We need to be as transparent as possible because, to the average member of the public, there’s going to be some questions about why we would end up skipping a (request for proposal) immediately after a member of this body left to go work at Flock.”
©2025 Advance Local Media LLC. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
