“Several Mass. legislators sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Tuesday urging the office to investigate federal funding of a controversial audio gunshot detection technology, saying the system may violate civil rights,” Boston.com reports.
“The letter, signed by Sen. Ed Markey, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, says the technology, called ShotSpotter, contributes to over policing in Black and Latino communities and calls into question the technology’s accuracy.”
Challenging acoustic locater technology is a good thing. I’ve been tracking it for years on both the original and the current version of my The War on Guns blog, and have yet to see a reason to disagree with a 2016 Forbes article showing “ShotSpotter Alerts Police To Lots Of Gunfire, But Produces Few Tangible Results.”
In short, I’ve not seen proponents compare costs to taxpayers in all the cities where it is deployed to arrests and then convictions credited to the technology. How many millions of dollars and how many saved lives are we talking about, and could those resources have been more effectively allocated with superior results for other policing tactics?
If you listen to the company that provides ShotSpotter, Sound Thinking (they “rebranded” and changed the corporate name last year), they dance around that and instead claim results such as:
“Enhances overall responses to gunfire; Improves speed of response; Improves spatial accuracy of response; Reduces transport time and saves lives; Improves evidence recovery; [and] Impact on gun violence levels.”
And while they make further claims, like citing a 2021 study reporting, “A study conducted in Cincinnati observed that serious gun violence is about 46% lower compared to the pre-treatment period and control tract simultaneously,” it’s also fair to mention a report documenting “Cincinnati saw the second-highest homicide rate increase during the coronavirus pandemic among the nation’s 50 biggest cities…”
How much of any of their claims that violence reductions can be attributed to ShotSpotter seems debatable.
In any case, corporate is a bit prickly on anyone calling their effectiveness into question. They sued Vice News for $300M back in 2021, and depending on who you listen to, the company spun it as “VICE retracted core allegations in a misleading and inaccurate story,” while TechDirt reported “Judge Tosses Defamation Suit Brought By ShotSpotter Against Vice Media For Reporting On Its Shady Tactics.”
“ShotSpotter is used in more than 160 cities and is highly regarded by law enforcement as a critical component of gun violence prevention and reduction strategies,” Sound Thinking declares. “ShotSpotter protects a wide range of city types and sizes ranging from urban metropolitan cities such as Chicago and New York City; to medium-sized cities such as Boston, Denver, and Oakland; and small cities with populations less than 50,000 such as Richmond, CA and Pleasantville, NJ.”
Curiously, only one of those cities, Pleasantville, is not listed as a member of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG). So, if we’re to believe Markey, Warren, and Pressley, MAIG cities are using racist technology to over-police and violate Black and Latino civil rights. Such a charged indictment also calls into question the “progressive” creds of Giffords Senior Policy Advisor David Chipman, former Michael Bloomberg spokesflack, and Joe Biden’s first choice to be ATF Director (all the major gun-grab groups “applauded” his nomination), who did a stint at ShotSpotter as a senior vice president
Also curiously, all those groups endorse Pressley, Warren, and Markey, so what does that make them? Is this a paradox, or what?
And true to “progressive” form, theirs isn’t even an original idea. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said he was going to scrap it because of “racial bias” back in February but then extended it to cover the Democrat National Convention this summer. Gun prohibitionists have always been big on making sure they’re protected on the taxpayers’ dime.
For its part, SoundCloud says, “There is zero data supporting the claim that ShotSpotter puts police on high alert or creates dangerous situations.” But regardless of whose side, if anyone’s, is believed, there’s an inconvenient truth that further shows what a sick joke the “over-policing/racism” charges are, and how it shows those making it to be self-serving frauds: If you do want to police an area for maximum results, where else would you do it but in high crime area?
“Murder isn’t a nationwide problem. It’s a problem in a small set of urban areas, and even in those counties, murders are concentrated in small areas inside them,” economist, author, and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, John Lott, has documented. If you want to stop criminals, you have to go where the criminals are.
This goes back to another leftist narrative being floated, tellingly expressed by New York State Senator Zellnor Myrie, who wants to ban all semiautos capable of having a device like a so-called “Glock switch” installed, that is, all semiautos.
“On 3/31/2019, we voted to reform the state’s criminal justice system, he declared,” equating incarceration of criminals with slavery. “It was a vote to begin the journey of freeing my people from mass incarceration and the honor of my life to be a part of this historic time.”
Free the criminals and ban the most effective means of defense from their victims. That the ones who suffer the most will be their constituents who live in those concentrated areas is left unacknowledged. If you disagree, you’re a racist.
White Ed Markey and White (except when she’s an Indian) Elizabeth Warren wouldn’t try to build up woke credits and advance themselves at the expense of everyone, even sometime allies, with a damnable lie, would they? If they’re not about public safety, what are they after?
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
