SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – A gunshot detection technology used by two of the Bay Area's largest police departments is facing newfound scrutiny, as a federal lawsuit alleges one of the country's biggest departments misused the "unreliable" technology and an advocacy group's report claims cities are wasting money on "unproven" surveillance.
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Northwestern University's MacArthur Justice Center sued the City of Chicago in federal court on Thursday, alleging that its police department's use of ShotSpotter – which has contracts with the San Francisco and Oakland police departments – resulted in two men's arbitrary arrests and jailing.
One man, a 65-year-old Black grandfather from the city's South Side charged with murdering his neighbor, spent more than a year in jail before a judge dismissed his case after prosecutors said they had insufficient evidence. The suit alleged that police deliberately didn't pursue other leads after using audio that ShotSpotter's network of sensors detected to link him to the killing.
A week before the lawsuit, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project published a report arguing that "cities are squandering money on ShotSpotter’s unproven surveillance technology."
They cited a 2020 academic study which found that ShotSpotter alerts – which rely on algorithms, artificial intelligence and sensors to determine if a sound is a gunshot or something else – in St. Louis led to "no serious reductions in violent crime," and a 2021 Chicago Inspector General report found that just 9.1% of alerts officers responded to were confirmed to be gunshots.
The San Francisco Police Department, asked to comment on the lawsuit and the report, said in a statement to KCBS Radio that it would be inappropriate “to comment on pending litigation in another jurisdiction." Neither the San Francisco Privacy and Surveillance Board, the Oakland Police Department nor the Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission responded to KCBS Radio's requests for comment prior to publication.
ShotSpotter told the Associated Press in a statement this week that it has a "highly accurate with a 97% aggregate accuracy rate for real-time detections across all customers," repeating the claim in its marketing materials. San Francisco and Oakland police leaders have also touted its effectiveness.
San Francisco Police Chief William Scott appears in a testimonial video the company produced, while the Oakland Police Department issued two press releases in May crediting ShotSpotter alerts with multiple arrests and gun recoveries.
In an Oakland police memo provided last year to the Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission, the department’s data showed that ShotSpotter alerted police to about 5,500 "unique gunshot incidents" that residents didn't report to police. Among those, 25.3% (1,395) identified gun-related crimes. The vast majority of the reported crimes ShotSpotter alerts identified (70%) were negligent discharge of a firearm, and 16.4% were a homicide, assault with a firearm or shooting at an occupied home or vehicle.
Police said "several" of the 101 victims who survived shootings that ShotSpotter alerted "specifically because of the quick response" and "subsequent medical attention." The memo didn't specify how many, if any, of those shootings were also reported by civilians, nor did it say how many of the alerts led to arrests or convictions.
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