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The controversial gunshot-detection software purchased by the New York Police Department for $54.6 million generates constant false alarms that waste police officers’ time, according to an audit by the city comptroller.
Across eight months in 2022 and 2023, alerts from ShotSpotter sensors sent officers to investigate thousands of sounds that were never confirmed to be shootings, the audit found. In June 2023, for example, just 13% of ShotSpotter alerts were confirmed as shootings. The time spent – an average of 20 minutes investigating alerts later deemed unfounded and 32 minutes on alerts that were never confirmed as gunshots – added up to some 36 shifts for a single officer, the audit found.
The NYPD has contracted since 2014 with the California-based company SoundThinking, which has installed more than 2,000 of its gunshot-detecting ShotSpotter sensors in neighborhoods with high rates of gun violence. The city has paid $45 million for that work, with the total set to reach $54.6 million by the end of the current contract in December.
ShotSpotter technology promises to help police departments respond more quickly to shootings, and the audit by Comptroller Brad Lander found some success in that mission: officers responded about 90 seconds faster to ShotSpotter-detected shootings in June 2023 compared to the typical five-and-a-half-minute response time for 911 calls. (The NYPD itself does not track that difference, which auditors calculated for themselves.)
But between 80% and 92% of ShotSpotter alerts in the studied eight months were unconfirmed, amounting to 7,262 incidents where police responded but never uncovered any gunshots, the audit found.
“The evidence shows that NYPD is wasting precious time and money on this technology and needs to do a better job managing its resources,” Lander, who is reportedly considering challenging Mayor Eric Adams in 2025, said in a statement. “Chasing down car backfires and construction noise does not make us safer.”
SoundThinking strongly disputed the report’s conclusions. Tom Chittum, the company’s senior vice president for forensic services, said in a statement that Lander’s office wrongly implied that all unconfirmed shootings were false reports, and argued that the comptroller failed to acknowledge “lives saved” from the technology.
“ShotSpotter is both accurate and effective. It has been deployed in New York City since 2015, and over 170 cities rely on ShotSpotter technology to detect and alert law enforcement to instances of gunfire,” Chittum said. “Every day wherever ShotSpotter is deployed, our technology proves its reliability in detecting gunshots that helps first responders interrupt crimes, catch criminals, and save lives.”
The NYPD similarly defended the technology in its formal response to the audit, arguing that the comptroller underestimated the number of shootings detected by ShotSpotter since the audit only analyzed shootings that were confirmed at the scene. The department also argued that money is not wasted on the potential false alarms, since it assigns officers already on patrol to respond.
The NYPD’s contract with ShotSpotter does not count false positives against the vendor’s performance. The police department did add a new level of oversight in a 2021 contract renewal, giving it the right to withhold payments if ShotSpotter fails to detect 90% of outdoor gunshots in its target areas — but that standard is only geared toward avoiding missed incidents rather than minimizing false alarms.
For that reason, the NYPD has given ShotSpotter high marks for its contract success — in 2022, the company hit the 90% benchmark in most areas except for a few parts of Manhattan.
ShotSpotter does not relay every noise to the NYPD. Instead, when a sensor registers a potential gunshot, ShotSpotter’s employees review each sound, dismiss a majority of them, and then route the suspected shots to the NYPD, which sends them to the relevant precinct.
Though responding officers are already on duty, the comptroller’s office argued that the use of overtime may nonetheless increase at the margins. Police may be forced to spend more time responding to unconfirmed alerts and then conducting needless investigations, the office said. (The NYPD routinely overspends its allotted overtime budget, and had spent more than $700 million on overtime this fiscal year as of March, officials said.)
ShotSpotter has generated controversy in many of the 170 other U.S. cities where it is used. Some advocates argue the technology results in disproportionate surveillance in communities of color and note that it has resulted in at least one false arrest. Several cities, including Chicago and Houston, have taken steps to drop it in recent months.
The Fremont, Calif.-based parent company rebranded from ShotSpotter to SoundThinking last year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The audit recommended against renewing ShotSpotter’s contract when it expires in December unless it first does a more thorough evaluation that considers its low rate of confirmed shootings. The NYPD disagreed in its response to the audit, saying canceling the contract would endanger the public.
An NYPD spokesperson said in a statement that “the department consistently reviews the effectiveness of technologies it utilizes to combat crime.”
“ShotSpotter remains an integral tool in the NYPD’s mission of addressing gun violence and keeping the public safe,” the unnamed spokesperson said.
Nick Garber , 2024-06-20 22:35:01
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