When a gunshot is fired in the device's range, a notification is sent to Albuquerque police dispatch, and related information can be accessed by officers through an app.
Albuquerque Police Department spokeswoman Franchesca Perdue said APD has seen about a 26% drop in gunfire where the ShotSpotter system is active, or from 5,244 incidents in 2023 to 3,865 in 2024, between Jan. 1 to May 2.
She said the city attributes the decrease in gunshots to officer responses to ShotSpotter alerts, along with other technology APD uses such as surveillance cameras and license plate readers.
There will be four ShotSpotter zones that will be put up around Uptown by the end of summer, APD Deputy Chief J.J. Griego said during a Wednesday news conference announcing the expansion.
Police Chief Harold Medina said having ShotSpotter devices around places like Coronado mall will "help the public understand what is occurring."
Medina then referenced separate single-gunshot incidents that happened just outside the shopping center in March and on Black Friday, which he said "resulted in massive amounts of officers being dispatched."
"Officers were dispatched under the impression that we had an active shooter," Medina said. "There was a lot of unneeded disruption of everybody's days from those incidents.
"Yes, they were serious, but we also have to have the right information and we can't make things more serious or cause more hysteria than we should."
But Medina added that the additional coverage isn't just about Coronado Center; it's about the shopping district as a whole because a lot of people frequent the area.
"Having ShotSpotter in the Uptown area will provide officers crucial information pointing to better leads, building stronger cases and ensuring individuals who are committing these types of crimes are being held in jail," Medina said in a statement.
ShotSpotter was implemented by APD in 2020 and, according to APD, has been placed in parts of the city with high reported rates of gunshots.
Griego said it costs about $70,000 to $75,000 to implement ShotSpotter devices per square mile, and that the funding comes from federal and state coffers.
" ShotSpotter is expensive. We don't deny that," he said.
When asked how many square miles there were or how much the system costs as a whole, Griego said he did not have an immediate answer . APD did not respond to emails seeking the full cost of the system with the expansion.
In March 2023, the Journal reported that the city of Albuquerque had signed a $3.2 million contract with the California-based company.
A Journal analysis found that in 2022, officers were dispatched to more than 12,000 ShotSpotter alerts, collecting 13,000 bullet casings and detaining 75 suspects. But in 9,000, or 75%, of the times police were dispatched, officers found no evidence of a shooting.
Medina said on Wednesday that he would like to see ShotSpotters placed in other locations across the city, including at "educational institutions" and public buildings to "indicate something happening inside."
©2024 the Albuquerque Journal, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
