ShotSpotter technology can sense gunfire using acoustic sensors and can identify how many shots were fired and where, according to a police news release.
Opponents of the technology have doubted ShotSpotter’s reliability, with an Associated Press investigation raising questions about the technology’s accuracy, and experts say there is little data to suggest its use alone can reduce gun violence.
A spokesperson for the company, now known as SoundThinking, said in a statement Thursday that ShotSpotter had a 97% aggregate accuracy rate across all customers from 2019 through 2022, according to data verified independently by data analytics firm Edgeworth Analytics. The technology’s false-positive rate was 0.5% across all customers during the same time period.
The department will begin operating the gunshot detection system in the Wilkens and Essex precincts, in southwestern and southeastern Baltimore County respectively, on July 26. County police will use American Rescue Plan Act funds to pay for the $738,000 pilot program, slated to last two years.
Police spokesperson Trae Corbin wrote in an email to The Baltimore Sun on Wednesday that police data determined the two precincts chosen would “provide the best outlook on the pilot program’s effectiveness.”
Corbin declined to say how many devices would be used, saying the company installs devices within a designated coverage area but does not reveal the total number of devices to the police department.
The county has not yet fulfilled a Maryland Public Information Act request, filed Thursday by The Sun, for a copy of the SoundThinking contract.
“I fully support this new technology,” Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough said in a department news release. “I believe it will be a valued resource in assisting the Baltimore County Police Department in combatting gun crime.”
According to the news release, fewer than 20% of incidents involving a firearm discharge are reported to police. ShotSpotter will allow officers to be notified within a minute of a gunshot, and respond “quicker and more precisely,” the department said. An acoustic expert reviews the machine’s alert before it reaches police.
Daniel Webster, professor and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy, said he has not encountered research that shows the ShotSpotter technology leads to less gun violence, despite being in use for at least 25 years.
“I haven’t seen some empirical, rigorous study that says this investment in this technology made the community safer,” Webster said, although he said he doesn’t question ShotSpotter’s ability to detect gunshots.
While some data suggests the devices help police respond faster, in one study by about a minute and a half, it’s not clear those improved response times increase the probability that a gunshot victim will survive, he said.
Webster said if police departments want to improve their shooting investigations, they should view the technology as just one component of a larger strategy. Officers alerted to gunshots in a high-traffic area may have to balance competing calls, and not every gun discharge means a person has been shot. “You have this new toy, this new technology, how does it fit into an overall strategy?” Webster said.
Asked how the ShotSpotter technology fits into broader county police efforts to reduce gun violence, Corbin said in an email that the devices “are another investigative resource the department will utilize in efforts to combat violent crime and deter criminal activity in Baltimore County.”
In response to questions about how the department will prioritize increased calls from ShotSpotter devices amid hundreds of department vacancies, Corbin referred questions to the county’s 911 center.
Danita Tolson, president of the Baltimore County branch of the NAACP, said she was surprised to see the Baltimore County Police announcement about the new investment and questioned why McCullough had not mentioned it during his monthly meetings with NAACP leadership.
“It would’ve been nice to communicate with the community. If they’re not [getting feedback], and they’re just solely making decisions, it’s not going to work,” Tolson said. While she said she wants to see a decrease in crime, she expressed concerns about the technology’s accuracy and whether it may lead to increased policing of minority residents.
“Are they going to see how effective it is? What population it affects?” Tolson asked. Corbin said the department’s crime analysis unit would evaluate data from the pilot to determine its effectiveness.
In SoundThinking’s statement to The Sun, the company spokesperson said ShotSpotter provides intelligence that allows police to respond in a more precise area than a 911 call, using fewer resources and increasing community trust.
“When ShotSpotter alerts police to gunfire, those officers are given more information about the incident than they would have without ShotSpotter. This information allows for a safer and more equitable response that helps to lessen the tension between communities of color and law enforcement,” the statement said.
Unlike Tolson, the president of the NAACP’s Randallstown branch, Ryan Coleman, said he did know about plans for a pilot before it became public. “Certainly we have too much gun violence: anything to help with that I’m for it,” Coleman said Wednesday.
Jeff Gilleran, chief attorney of the Forensics Division at the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, raised concerns that the tool would target communities of color and low income neighborhoods, leading to a disparate impact on those residents. Gilleran criticized the technology as “subjective, unvalidated and unreliable.”
“It does not have any proven method of distinguishing gunfire from other loud noises and its use is shrouded in secrecy. The vast majority of ShotSpotter alerts are determined by police not to relate to gun activity,” Gilleran wrote in an email to The Sun on Wednesday. A 2021 report from Chicago’s Office of the Inspector General found Chicago Police responses to ShotSpotter alerts “rarely produced evidence of a gun-related crime.”
“We believe the citizens of Baltimore County should not be subjected to an experiment in the use of yet another unreliable surveillance technology that has been proven to cause uninformative investigations and false arrests,” Gilleran wrote.
Baltimore City’s police department uses ShotSpotter devices, which were praised by former police commissioner Michael Harrison in 2021 when the city’s Board of Estimates approved a contract extension for the system. Mayor Brandon Scott described himself at the time as “a skeptic” of the technology.
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