Boston Crime prevention tool ‘ShotSpotter’ responds to criticism

The city of Boston, like every other major U.S. city, is working hard to reduce violent crime and murder rates.

In Boston, by mid-August 2024, police responded to more than 80 shootings.

In most of those cases, police were first alerted, not by calls to 911, but through the ShotSpotter system.

It’s a crimefighting tool that Boston Police have used since 2007. But ShotSpotter has become a lightning rod for critics, who call it ineffective and an example of over-policing in minority neighborhoods.

ACLU Massachusetts, citing its own study, is calling on the city of Boston to end its relationship with ShotSpotter.

Recently, ShotSpotter officials visited Boston to talk about whey they think the critics have it wrong.

The private, for-profit company, Sound Thinking, provides ShotSpotter.

The system relies on sensors hidden throughout the city which detect the sound of gunfire. It then alerts police to the location of the sound. The company says the alert can take less than 60 seconds.

But ACLU Massachusetts is warning city officials that in its review of Boston Police data, ShotSpotter is unreliable.

From 2020 to 2022 the ACLU found 70% of ShotSpotter’s Boston alerts were not gunshots at all, but false alarms.

“That’s completely inaccurate,” SoundThinking CEO Ralph Clark told me. “What they really should be saying is 70% might not, result in physical, forensic evidence of a shooting or a victim or a perpetrator. That doesn’t mean that gunfire didn’t take place. There’s, in fact, plenty of digital evidence that gunfire did take place because we actually record the sound of the gunfire.”

CEO Clark says ShotSpotter, by contract, is obligated to maintain a 90% accuracy rate.

He contends, company-wide, ShotSpotter’s accuracy rate is 97%.

“It’s a bit of a mischaracterization that the ACLU is making in that regard,” Clark said.

But critics are concerned about more than ShotSpotter’s accuracy.

They contend the use of ShotSpotter is unfair to minority communities because that’s where the ShotSpotter devices are located, which can lead to more police calls, and over-policing.

The ACLU said in a statement: “ShotSpotter is an unreliable technology that poses a substantial threat to civil rights and civil liberties, almost exclusively for the black and brown people who live in the neighborhoods subject to its ongoing surveillance.”

“We need to go where the gun violence happens,” CEO Clark responded. “Race is not a consideration for us at all. It’s not in the data.”

The ACLU says most of ShotSpotter’s Boston devices are located in Dorchester and Roxbury.

Both Massachusetts US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, along with U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley are urging the Department of Homeland Security to review federal grant money given to ShotSpotter. They say they believe that funding violates the 1964 Civil Rights Act Against Discrimination.

In Boston, former Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, a ShotSpotter Board member, says he agrees with current Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox that the ShotSpotter system protects neighborhoods from gun violence.

“You put the system where it can do the most good,” Bratton told me. “We don’t identify where to put the system, the police department does. So effectively, we’re responding to the police awareness of where it can do the most good.”

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has come out in favor of extending ShotSpotter’s contract, saying it saves lives.

It appears Boston will be using the ShotSpotter system for at least the next three years.

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