Image © ShotSpotter Inc.
How ShotSpotter works
How ShotSpotter works
In the United States, most citizens dying due to violence are Black men, making them the number one category of crime victims. Black men make up about 6% of the U.S. population, but yet an astounding 40% of those murdered. Most of the fatalities are due to gun violence.
A 2021 study by the Wisconsin Medical Journal determined that ‘Wisconsin has the second-highest Black homicide rate in the country, reporting a rate of 37.57 deaths per 100,000 Black non-Hispanic Wisconsinites.’ Of the 214 Milwaukee homicides in 2022, 84% of the victims were Black, over three-quarters men.
To catch the perpetrators or head off a gun violence incident, the Milwaukee Police Department has, in part, relied on technology. It’s called ShotSpotter, a network of acoustic sensors that triangulates the location of loud impulsive sounds identified by analysts as gunshots. ShotSpotter has been in place since 2010 and currently covers four central city police districts (District 2,3, 5, and 7) that serve mainly Black neighborhoods but also Latino.
Over the last 13 years, the total cost to the city for the ShotSpotter contract has been nearly $3.7 million. Located in Fremont, California, ShotSpotter is a private company that contracts with police departments across the nation. According to its website, “ShotSpotter’s End-to-End Precision Policing Platform is an integrated suite of data-driven tools that enables law enforcement to be more effective and equitable. It will enable rapid response to gunfire, 80% of which is not reported to 911.” ShotSpotter features a number of testimonials from its clients, city police departments across the country.
I wanted to find out if ShotSpotter has been effective for Milwaukee police.
According to Police Chief Jeffrey Norman, the biggest challenge is to rapidly gain access to the area where gunshots are happening. In the year 2022, the MPD had over 15,000 ShotSpotter alerts, a huge majority coming from the North Side where Black residents reside.
“ShotSpotter is a tool that increases accuracy to locate the discharging of firearms,” Chief Norman told me. “We use ShotSpotter as a guidepost for responses and investigations. I believe ShotSpotter cuts down on response time because of the rate of accuracy as to where the gunshots originate. It narrows the location, pinpoints the actual area of the gunshots. As a former homicide detective, I have utilized ShotSpotter, which allowed me knowledge as to where I started my investigation. If police officers can get to a dangerous location quickly, they can begin to investigate, look for witnesses, locate the source of the gunshots.”
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What Spotter?
But what about the residents? What do they think of ShotSpotter? I found out that most residents have never heard of it, and so I turned to Black activist Vaun Mayes for his opinion. Mayes heads Community Task Force Milwaukee, a group of community activists, residents, youth leaders, and politicians who are striving toward peace and progress. He is the community organizer for the North Side, generally in the Sherman Park area, but he ventures all over to give aid and comfort to inner city residents in need of help. Mayes has improvised his own violence prevention platform. If his followers alert him to gunshots or a potential violent incident, he often jumps in his car and heads to the location, sometimes at night. He might even do a live video on his Facebook site.
I asked Mayes about ShotSpotter. “I think it’s a valuable tool,” he said. “ShotSpotter does work in a lot of cases. For me to locate a gunfire incident, first, I have to hear about it from a resident. Then, I get in my car and drive around to locate where it is happening. This takes me a while to get to the dangerous scene, especially at night. In a lot of cases, ShotSpotter can help locate victims or folks that may be hurt or injured or even killed. But there are challenges. For instance, the ShotSpotter goes off and locates the gunshots, and the police officers show up and might randomly stop or frisk people to see if they have a gun. But that is the only downside to the program.”
Hearing gunshots in certain North Side neighborhoods is not unusual. The young real estate developer, Michael Emem, grew up not far from Sherman Park. He told me, “Kind of a rough neighborhood. We had enough frequent shootings where that kind of criminal behavior became a way of life. I got used to drive-by shootings. First sound of gunfire, and we’d duck below the window in our house. I just assumed this was normal life. Wasn’t until I became a young adult that I realized these shouldn’t be acceptable living conditions.”
Yet currently in 2023, these still are the living conditions.
Gaining Access
I asked Mayes, “Do your ComForce people have access to the ShotSpotter alert?”
“No,” he said, “and I’d like my ComForce team to get access to ShotSpotter because when we hear shootings in our neighborhoods, it is sometimes difficult to find the location. I’ve been thinking we may have to develop our own scanner app to pick up chatter from police. We are here to help the police and protect the residents, and we are expanding. My people are slowly being trained to respond to life-saving measures or to mediate or de-escalate a situation. That includes CPR and EMT training. We now have four Community Task Force members CPR-certified. My goal is to get more of our youth and members trained and certified. I think we are setting a standard on how true collaboration and unity is supposed to look. We want to work with the police.”
When I told Chief Norman that community activist Mayes believes that ShotSpotter is a viable program, he said, “Good. I think the more police interact with community leaders about how particular tools are used, the more we gain trust with each other. It’s part of what I am trying to do with community engagement. Police officers working with residents improves safety and responses.”
I asked MPD Public Information Officer, Sergeant Cornejo, if Mayes could get access to the ShotSpotter platform. He said that presently there are no plans to share the ShotSpotter service with residents. But he added that the MPD city website offers access to daily incidents under “Calls for Service” where every incident is recorded, timed, and dated. He said, “For example, ‘Shots fired at such and such location.’”
I wanted to get Mayor Johnson’s take on ShotSpotter. His Communications Director Jeff Fleming told me that several months ago, the mayor received a demonstration of the ShotSpotter system. Mayor Johnson heard recordings of gunshots and heard details about how the sensors triangulate the source of the sound. He is supportive of continued use of the system in responding to gunfire incidents.
I also asked Ashanti Hamilton, the Director of the Office of Violence Prevention. He said, “ShotSpotter can be very useful if used appropriately. The data from our current infrastructure of spotters help us understand patterns of firearm usage, especially in the absence of shots being reported by residents. It can have challenges, but it is a helpful data collection tool.”
Finally, I asked Ed Fallone, Chair of the Fire & Police Commission, his opinion of ShotSpotter. He told me, “While ShotSpotter technology is not perfect, it provides real time information to the Milwaukee Police Department that allows data driven crime suppression strategies. Used appropriately, ShotSpotter can help identify individuals and specific locations that are sources of gun violence.”
The bottom line: Does ShotSpotter actually work? In general, the effectiveness of ShotSpotter at reducing crime is difficult to measure, in part because reasons for decreases or increases in violent crime cannot be confined to a single factor. But ShotSpotter does work effectively to narrow the location of gunfire. Police detectives are smart and quick but also orderly thinkers. It is a great advantage for them arrive early at the scene of gunfire.
The Milwaukee Common Council’s Finance and Personnel Committee will consider renewing ShotSpotter’s contract this spring.
