Controversy gets louder over $8M expanded audio surveillance push in Detroit
Detroit officials for months have been building a case for spending $8.5 million on expanding audio surveillance technology piloted in parts of the city as a means of preventing gun violence, but as City Council prepares to vote on the measure, voices opposing the measure have grown louder.
Some residents and elected officials, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, have raised concerns over privacy, wasted resources and biased policing, based on a number of studies and the use of ShotSpotter technology in other cities.
"Before we spend $8 million on something that doesn't work, let's reinvest in our communities and prevent these situations from happening," said east-side resident Dennis Black.
Black took part in a Friday news conference at Spirit Plaza organized by We The People Action Fund and others who oppose expanding the use of ShotSpotter. Black and others said they'd rather see the money spent on social services, housing resources, anti-poverty measures and employment opportunities.
City Council is expected to vote on the proposed expansion this week. If approved, $7 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds and $1.5 million in city funds would be used to finance the expansion. ShotSpotter, meant to detect gunfire in real time using strategically placed microphones, was rolled out in the city's 8th and 9th precincts in March 2021 at an initial cost of $1.5 million.
Councilwoman Gabriela Santiago-Romero, along with activist groups including the We The People Action Fund, Michigan Liberation, Detroit Will Breathe and Detroit Justice Center, have been fiercely opposing the proposed expansion of ShotSpotter, which would implement the surveillance technology beyond the 8th and 9th precincts, but not throughout the whole city.
"Our residents need investment in truly affordable housing, physical health care, reliable transportation, clean air and water, green spaces, child care, local markets with fresh food, produce and jobs with fair wages," Santiago-Romero said. "We need to support preventative solutions, programs and initiatives, not reactionary ones. ShotSpotter has shown inadequate evidence of improving safety, reducing crime or promoting positive relationships between residents and the police."
Crime patterns and response times
Detroit Police Chief James White and Mayor Mike Duggan have been aggressively advocating for the expansion, recently pointing to a specific case where the technology might have saved lives.
A day after a 19-year-old man indiscriminately gunned down four people, killing three on Aug. 28 in northwest Detroit, both pointed to the fact that there was no 911 call after the first shooting, and that ShotSpotter, had it been deployed in that area, may have alerted police to the situation more quickly.
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The currently proposed expansion, however, would not include the area where the shooting took place.
Duggan has blamed "an element of the defund the police group" for spreading misinformation about the technology. He said ShotSpotter uses no cameras and only identifies "the location of gunfire with precision so the police can respond immediately."
Police have also sought to dispel concerns over privacy.
"Audio is permanently deleted after 30 hours if no gunshot was detected and DPD cannot listen to live audio from sensors, we can only listen to recorded audio from a sensor of a confirmed or likely gunshot incident," said Assistant Police Chief David LeValley.
"Recorded audio should only be reviewable when pertinent to an active investigation involving the discharge of a firearm. Violations of these protections are subject to discipline or termination. ... The only instance in which it would be possible for us to get audio clips of voices is if there were a number of shots in succession and there was a pause between shots. If somebody fired one shot and then waited five seconds and fired another shot and in between those five seconds, somebody at that scene said something, that would be part of the clip we receive."
As for the cost, Duggan argues that discouraging gunfire in the city is well worth the proposed spending.
"We have a police department of $350 million a year. If we can stop people from shooting for a small percentage of that, that's our goal. We don't want to arrest people, we want them to make different choices," the mayor said.
Residents against the expansion say public safety and police response times are a top priority for Detroiters ― that's why they want crime reduction initiatives that actually work.
"City Council is considering spending $8 million in American Rescue Plan funding on expanding ShotSpotter, a faulty gun detection system that is both unfruitful and harmful to Black and brown people here in Detroit," said Kamau Clark of We The People Action Fund, pointing to March 2021 killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by Chicago police who were responding to a ShotSpotter alert.
"... This push for ShotSpotter has undercut democracy," Clark said.
In Detroit, ShotSpotter detected 4,977 incidents of gunfire in the 8th and 9th precincts between March 15, 2021 and May 5, 2022, according to Detroit police data provided to City Council. Shell casings were recovered in only 958 of those incidents. Police recovered a total of 257 guns during that time period, made 90 arrests on scene, and identified 503 guns associated with crimes, according to the data.
Overall violent crime, including nonfatal shootings are decreasing, compared with this time last year, in the 8th and 9th precincts, according to Detroit police data. In the 9th Precinct, however, homicides are up. The data does not show how many of those homicides are attributed to gun violence. The data also does not show a direct correlation between ShotSpotter and the decline in overall violent crime.
Ninth Precinct Commander Gerry Johnson Jr. believes ShotSpotter has been successful at reducing crime in the area. Police have scout cars in the area that are responsible for ShotSpotter runs.
"A lot of times, this means we’re out there, we’re actively patrolling," he said. "ShotSpotter is just a lead. We’re doing our investigation. I'm not saying there's going to be a conviction, that’s up to the court. But it helps us recover more firearms. We’ve seen a lot more involvement from our federal partners ... a lot more search warrants. We’re able to locate more crime patterns. We’re able to identify different high-impact locations (and) high-impact offenders."
Questionable effectiveness
Multiple studies have raised concerns regarding ShotSpotter's effectiveness — including one peer-reviewed, 17-year study that shows ShotSpotter did not reduce gun violence in 68 large metropolitan counties that utilize the technology.
And while the Detroit Police Department provides weekly data on the number of shots fired detected by ShotSpotter and incidents it responds to, the reports do not include information on false positives that other cities with the ShotSpotter technology have experienced. In response to a request for that data, police spokesman Jackson Vidaurri said Friday that as of Aug. 10, police "have not had any false positive incidents in 2022."
An Associated Press Investigation found that the system often misses gunfire, or misclassifies the sounds of fireworks or cars backfiring as gunshots. It also allows for ShotSpotter employees to "improperly claim that a defendant shot at police, or provide questionable counts of the number of shots allegedly fired by defendants. Judges in a number of cases have thrown out the evidence, according to the investigation.
The University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy earlier this month issued a policy brief citing numerous studies, data, and news reports related to ShotSpotter.
In it, public policy experts and researchers "analyze ShotSpotter and the company’s claims that the system improves safety, reduces crime, and promotes positive relationships between communities and police. We conclude that the technology’s accuracy, effectiveness, cost and systemic biases raise serious concerns," the brief stated.
One of those concerns was ineffectiveness. ShotSpotter touts a 97% accuracyrate that does not take into account false positives, according to researchers.
"The performance equation ShotSpotter uses only counts errors based on failure to identify a verified gunshot, or a mislocated verified gunshot," wrote Jillian Mammino, a second year master of public policy. "Meanwhile, the company claims ShotSpotter has only a 0.5% false positive rate, yet independent studies and customer reviews highlight false positives as the No. 1 operational concern."
The company also says it has a 0.5% false positive rate, but other studies suggest otherwise, the brief notes, including a MacArthur Justice Center probe that found 88.7% of initial police responses to ShotSpotter alerts in Chicago found no evidence of gun incidents.
The ineffectiveness of ShotSpotter technology, the researchers argue, is costly for cities and wastes resources. It could also cause systemic biases and it erodes trust between community members and police and promotes over-policing, typically in Black and brown communities, according to the brief.
A 2021 report conducted by the Inspector General of the city of Chicago showed there were more instances of "unrelated investigator stops," or stop and frisk tactics, in neighborhoods where ShotSpotter was implemented. And in St. Louis, there was a decrease in residents calling police regarding shots fired in their neighborhoods, and overall police response times did not improve.
Andrea Sahouri covers criminal justice for the Detroit Free Press. She can be contacted at asahouri@freepress.com, 313-264-0442, on Twitter @andreamsahouri.