A report by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) that said officers respond more quickly to ShotSpotter alerts than 911 calls doesn’t make a convincing argument for keeping the technology, according to experts who reviewed it. Eight university professors specializing in data science, sociology and criminology said the report lacked a number of key statistical measurements, and several questioned the accuracy of the report’s response time data.

Ald. David Moore (17th Ward) and other City Council members who are advancing an ordinance that would allow them to keep ShotSpotter in their wards requested the data from CPD. The ordinance, which the Reader reported was written with help from a ShotSpotter lobbyist, would also direct CPD to collect data on the number of shell casings and weapons recovered as a result of alerts. On April 1, the Committee on Police and Fire advanced the ordinance to the City Council, setting up a clash with Mayor Brandon Johnson, who announced in February that the City’s contract with ShotSpotter will expire in November. Moore did not respond to a request for comment…

GUNSHOTS RING OUT in a densely populated city neighborhood. Within seconds, based on data from an array of sound sensors deployed in the area, police are able to pinpoint the exact spot where the gunfire happened and dispatch the nearest officers to the scene, giving them a leg up in the race to catch the shooter and help any victims.

It’s hard to imagine why anyone would oppose having that kind of technological aid in the public-safety toolkit. But the evidence supporting gun detection technology, which has landed in scores of US cities, is not nearly that clear-cut, with the most comprehensive study to date suggesting it confers no public safety benefit.

Across the country, critics are raising questions about the impact of the high-tech gunfire locators on the heavily minority communities where they tend to be sited, asking whether they actually make those neighborhoods safer or just subject residents to more surveillance. The debate landed in Boston on Monday, where Police Commissioner Michael Cox faced tough questions at a City Council budget hearing about the city’s use of ShotSpotter, the brand name of the gun detection system the city has used since 2007.

Cox told councilors the technology is “how we stay safe” and said it’s crucial to how officers are deployed in some areas.

The accuracy of ShotSpotter is subject to wildly disparate claims.

SoundThinking, the California company that owns ShotSpotter, says the sensors have a 97 percent accuracy rate, and says the technology “saves lives in the places hit hardest by gunfire.”

WASHINGTON (7News) — 7News I-Team was all over disturbing video coming out of Prince George’s County Police Department involving an officer’s use of force

Cell phone video posted on social media showed Prince George’s County police officer Steven Tucker and another officer struggling with a suspect who was handcuffed. During this incident, both officers had their body cameras fall off.

Tucker lost his camera, not once, but twice.

Tucker grabbed the suspect’s neck during the struggle after the man refused to get in a patrol car’s front seat. They fell and Tucker’s arm ended up on the man’s neck. This was all caught on cell phone video. That video is the only recorded evidence of the actual struggle because Tucker and a second female officer’s body cameras fell off…

WASHINGTON (7News) — 7News has discovered a major concern about the Prince George’s County Police Department.

A lack of backseat cages may have led to disturbing incidents of use of force.

It appears that the Prince George’s County Police Department’s lack of back seat cages in their patrol cars in two separate incidents of use of force contributed to things getting out of control very quickly.

There was no back seat cage in 2020 when Officer Steven Tucker was spat on by a handcuffed and belted-in suspect — and Tucker punched the man eight times…

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, Md. (7News) — Earlier this month, 7News was the first to show you a disturbing video coming out of the Prince George’s County Police Department.

One of its officers hit a suspect eight times in the head after the suspect spit at the officer.

It was ruled justifiable.

Now, 7News has questions about another alarming use of force video involving the same police officer.

Cell phone video posted on X last October showed Prince George’s County Police Officer Steven Tucker grabbing a handcuffed suspect’s neck during a struggle after the man refused to get in a patrol car’s front seat…

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, Md. (7News) — 7News obtained a disturbing video of a Prince George’s County police officer and his use of force. Some of the footage is hard to watch and until now, the public has never viewed the video.

Police officers have a very tough job and it’s a dangerous one. We do know if force is used in some arrests.

The exclusive video 7News obtained is from 2020 and showed a very intoxicated suspect spit at Prince George’s County police officer Steven Tucker Jr. while he was driving his patrol car. Tucker reacted by punching the suspect a total of eight times.

Is it the proper use of force? Decide for yourself. But, Prince George’s County Police Department called Tucker’s use of force justifiable…

When a gunshot goes off, police will tell you seconds matter, which is why for years, the gunshot warning technology called ShotSpotter has been so popular with police departments across the country.

“To know where the incidents of gunshots are taking place and to be able to respond immediately, as quickly as possible, is very important to the city,” Mayor Michelle Wu said Wednesday.

Now, a new report by the ACLU of Massachusetts is raising questions about the effectiveness of ShotSpotter. The ACLU said it analyzed 1,300 reports it obtained from Boston Police for so-called ShotSpotter activations between 2020 and 2022.

“In nearly 70% of cases, Boston Police officers found no evidence of gunfire in response to ShotSpotter alerts,” said Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts. “The technology is unreliable, it is sending police looking for shooters in communities where there may not have even been a shooting.”

The ACLU has argued before that those police responses, paired with the way human analysis can be applied to the technology, can lead to an infringement on the civil liberties of people who live in the neighborhoods.

Dr. Eric Piza is director of Crime Analysis Initiatives and a professor at Northeastern University. He led what is believed to be the largest study about ShotSpotter, analyzing 15 years of data in Kansas City and Chicago.

“We essentially found the technology offers some procedural benefits, for example police officers arrive on scene a little bit quicker with ShotSpotter calls, however we didn’t find any improvements on public safety,” Piza said. “Shootings did not go down in the ShotSpotter areas after the installation of ShotSpotter, shootings were not any more likely to be solved in either city after the deployment of ShotSpotter.”

Roughly 18 months after police officials labeled gunshot detection technology as not “fiscally responsible,” an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department working group reversed course and recommended purchasing ShotSpotter services, according to a 2023 report obtained by Mirror Indy.

In 2021, against a backdrop of protesters calling for the city to defund the police, IMPD Deputy Chief Kendale Adams voiced his opposition to a proposal that would have allocated $730,000 to spend on a gunshot detection system.

“One of the things this proposal talks about is ShotSpotter. And we’ve looked at that technology. It’s an expensive technology,” Adams said at a July 2021 meeting of the City-County Council. “It’s continuing to be technology we look at, but at this time, it just would not be fiscally responsible.”

But by the following February, police officials said they would test the use of gunshot detection technology on the east side. That pilot, which aimed to test the capabilities of ShotSpotter and two other vendors, concluded at the end of 2022. Police did not release the results of that study.