The effectiveness and impacts of the systems, especially the gunshot detection system, has been questioned by advocacy groups as the popularity of the technology grows nationwide.
Glynn County Police Chief Scott Ebner said during a roundtable discussion with media on Wednesday that he has seen both technologies work well to help police track down suspects and make arrests.
"This is something that will grow," Ebner said. "This will help us get started."
The county was recently awarded $871,300 in public safety grant money provided by the federal American Rescue Plan Act to cover the cost of installation of both systems. Ebner said the department is only in the beginning phases of choosing the systems and will be reviewing bids in the coming months.
A large chunk of the money will go toward purchasing a gunshot detection system like ShotSpotter, or something similar, which helps police departments triangulate when and where gunfire occurs using microphones set up around the community. The system then alerts police of the gunfire without waiting for it to be called into 911 and dispatched over police radios.
"It records that loud, instantaneous sound. It's not recording people speaking," Ebner said about privacy concerns.
Officers will be able to respond more quickly and effectively to where shots are fired using the system, Ebner said. He said the locations of the microphones around the community will be driven by data to target areas where gun violence has been more prevalent.
The goal is to ultimately bring more violent criminals to justice, Ebner said.
Gunshot detection technology has been growing in popularity in recent years as a way to address gun violence. More than 130 cities across the country have installed similar systems, many of them funded by federal dollars, according to a 2022 report by Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, or STOP.
Companies like ShotSpotter that offer the technology, of which there are several, say it enhances law enforcement efforts and helps minimize gun violence.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the technology can also help to thwart mass shootings or active-shooter scenarios by alerting police officers to the shots before an incident becomes more dangerous.
Gunshot detection systems also have their detractors. The American Civil Liberties Union said in 2021 that the technology sends police on numerous false alarms, costing departments and taxpayers more money and spreading officers thin chasing gunfire that doesn't exist.
False alerts, for example when a car backfires or fireworks are shot, can also cause officers to rush into situations and lead to poor or knee-jerk decision making that can increase the danger of police interactions, the ACLU said.
Ebner knows gunshot detection technology is not perfect, but it does offer a tool officers can use in fighting crime. Any tool that can provide leads, information or evidence is worth using, he said.
"If we see that false alerts are coming in, we will address that immediately with the company," he said in a telephone call on Thursday.
He said careful data analysis will help the Glynn County Police Department monitor closely how effective the technology is and allow it to work with the company to tweak it so it works its best.
As for wasting the time and resources of officers who may respond to a false alert, Ebner said it is never a waste of time to have officers patrolling communities whether there is gunfire there or not.
The ACLU and STOP both also report that gunshot detection technology is used by police departments to target minority and impoverished neighborhoods. That causes more police interaction in those neighborhoods, which leads to disproportionately more arrests of minorities and poor people, they said.
The STOP study, which focused solely on the ShotSpotter brand detection technology, showed that the technology is used to monitor the 12 police districts in Chicago with the largest share of Black and Latin residents. In Cleveland, Atlanta, and Kansas City, Missouri, it is used almost exclusively on Black and Latin neighborhoods, the STOP study showed.
In New York City, 70% of the 31 NYPD precincts that use ShotSpotter in 2018 were majority Black or Latin, the STOP study showed.
Police officers do not respond to calls in certain neighborhoods because of their racial makeup or socioeconomic status, Ebner said. Officers instead respond to where they are called and needed, especially in the case of gunfire reports, he said.
"If you look at the statistics now, we're in certain areas because that's where the calls occur," Ebner said. "We have to be there because we are called there."
Neither the detection technology nor the camera system is designed to catch minor offenses like improper firework usage or traffic offenses, he said.
"Serious violent crime is what we are trying to thwart," Ebner said.
The license plate reading camera system will provide officers with an opportunity to find stolen vehicles, cars that may be involved in kidnappings or sex trafficking, and identify vehicles that may have been involved in a serious violent crime, among other things. Ebner said.
"The cameras aren't geared at a specific residence or a school or a church," Ebner said. "They're positioned in strategic areas so we can pick up traffic coming into an area or leaving an area. That's how they're designed to work."
Ebner said the cameras were very effective in other areas where he has worked at placing suspects at a certain place at a certain time, which can become valuable evidence in making an arrest.
Combining the camera system with the gunshot detection technology may even help police officers identify where criminal activity is happening that may have otherwise been under the radar, Ebner said.
"This may also broaden where we focus our patrols," Ebner said.
The information gathered through the systems will also be useful for other agencies like the Brunswick Police Department as the two collaborate and share intel to address violent crime in the Golden Isles, he said.
The Brunswick Police Department also received nearly $1 million in grant money recently through ARPA funding for a camera system that will be used similarly at major intersections throughout the city.
© 2023 The Brunswick News (Brunswick, Ga.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
