04/24/2024

ShotSpotter Keeps Listening for Gunfire after Contracts Expire

This has upset many community activists

In February, when Mayor Brandon Johnson announced that Chicago would stop using the gunshot-detection system known as ShotSpotter by year’s end, local activists were elated.

Ever since 2021, when the police fatally shot 13-year-old Adam Toledo while responding to a ShotSpotter alert, the Stop ShotSpotter Campaign has been pressuring the city to ditch the technology. Johnson’s decision not to renew the Windy City’s contract with ShotSpotter was seen as the culmination of the campaign’s efforts.

But ending the contract may not be enough to remove the company’s more than 2,500 sensors from neighborhoods on the city’s South and West Sides, where they’re disproportionately located. Internal emails reviewed by South Side Weekly and WIRED suggest that ShotSpotter keeps its sensors online and, in some instances, provides gunshot-detection alerts to police departments in cities where its contracts have expired or been canceled. The emails raise new questions about whether the more than 2,500 sensors in Chicago will be turned off and removed, regardless of Johnson’s decision.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.