A scolding from the mayor for some members’ “snarky” comments.
Emotions ran high Thursday as Durham Police Chief Patrice Andrews briefed the Durham City Council on plans to move ahead with a controversial gunshot detection program.
ShotSpotter, a California-based company, uses audio sensors to pinpoint the location of possible gunfire.
The company’s audio technicians monitor the sounds and work to get emergency response dispatched immediately in cities across the state and country, including Greensboro, Wilmington and Greenville, NC. New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C., use the technology as well.
Andrews explained how the city plans to move forward. Police will compare the results of the technology in an area with the sensors against a similar area without the sensors, she said. The department also will partner with Duke University researchers to monitor the program, she said.
Mayor Pro Tem Mark-Anthony Middleton has been a strong proponent for a year-long pilot program.
“When gunfire goes off in our city, knowing precisely where the shots come from, I don’t see how this is a threat to our democracy,” he said.
He noted how some Durham families teach their children to jump into the bathtub for safety when they hear gunshots.
“Is it worth a few hundred thousand dollars to see if we can make their lives better? Hell yes. Every time. Every time,” he said.
City Council leaned 5-2 — with members Javiera Caballero and Jillian Johnson against — to fund the pilot in fiscal year 2022-23 through a 90-day free trial, with a cost of $197,500 for the following nine months.
Caballero thanked Middleton for his “verbose” comments, but she and Johnson remain opposed.
“I am really not happy about this, but I realize I am not going to be able to prevent the program from going forward,” Johnson said Thursday, explaining that sending police to areas, in some cases for false positive readings, could lead to unjust police searches.
Council members Monique Holsey-Hyman and Leonardo Williams also support ShotSpotter. But when Williams teared up describing how a former student of his was fatally back in 2007 while saving his 2-year-old niece, it made his case for the nearly $200,000 program seem worth the investment.
And then Mayor Elaine O’Neal’s reprimand came.
“The one thing that really bothers me the most that I’ve seen a couple times up here is the snarkiness or the dismissiveness when people have differing opinions,” O’Neal said.
“It’s not kind. It’s not mature. … Disagreements do not have to have this sharp cutting edge that’s designed to prick people,” she added.
More people have been shot in Durham during the first three months of 2022 than during the same period in 2021, The News & Observer reported last week, after the chief’s latest crime report.
A possible record 318 people were shot in Durham two years ago, and last year the city recorded 50 homicides, most of them shootings, The N&O previously reported.
After two men were killed in a campus parking lot in September 2021, leaders at N.C. Central University, located on Fayetteville Street south of downtown, also supported bringing ShotSpotter to Durham.
Kenneccia Woolard, a then junior studying social work, spoke at a council meeting after a stray bullet pierced her dorm room window in September 2020 and she was injured from the shattered glass. A year later, NCCU Chancellor Johnson O. Akinleye requested more resources to fight violence in and around the Durham campus.
“We are a public institution and an open campus,” Akinleye said during a news conference. “We cannot close up our campus with iron fences and gates.”
“But we will not live in fear or have our health and well being at risk due to gun violence and crime,” he added.
Andrews acknowledged Johnson’s and Caballero’s concerns and said police will incorporate the new technology in the proper manner.
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