Above photo: ShotSpotter equipment overlooks the intersection of South Stony Island Avenue and East 63rd Street in Chicago on Aug. 10, 2021. AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast.
The controversial police surveillance tech is often inaccurate, according to research that allowed activists to launch a fact-based campaign and a potential model for organizers in other cities.
In September, the city of Chicago stopped using ShotSpotter, a sensor system designed to detect gunshots and alert police and first responders. During his 2023 campaign for Mayor, Brandon Johnson promised to end the use of the expensive technology, which he has referred to as “walkie-talkies on a stick.”
Johnson’s decision to end ShotSpotter was not popular with the Chicago City Council. Alderman Silvana Tabares issued an inflammatory statement declaring that “every gunshot victim left bleeding in the streets of our city will be a worthy sacrifice in the eyes of the mayor for his radical agenda.”
The City Council passed a resolution giving the police the ability to renew the contract.
Johnson threatened to veto it, but did not. Nonetheless, even if there is an opening for ShotSpotter going forward, the end of the contract is a victory that anti-policing and anti-surveillance activists in the city had been working toward for years. Their achievement provides a potential blueprint for other cities trying to roll back the use of ShotSpotter and other high-tech crime “solutions” in favor of investments in underprivileged communities.
High cost, uncertain benefits
In 2018, Chicago signed a three-year, $33 million contract with California-based security tech company SoundThinking to use ShotSpotter technology. The contract was extended in 2021. Altogether, the city has spent about $49 million on the technology.
ShotSpotter is supposed to alert police to gunfire and allow them to scramble to the scene to catch perpetrators, prevent violence, and tend to injuries. SoundThinking claims ShotSpotter has a 97% accuracy rate.
However, independent studies of ShotSpotter’s use and efficacy have found little benefit. The MacArthur Justice Center, which examined ShotSpotter deployments between July 2019 and April 2021 in Chicago, found that ShotSpotter resulted in 61 deployments in Chicago per day without any evidence of crime.
Overall, 88.72% of incidents flagged by ShotSpotter ended with police finding no incident of gun crime. The City of Chicago’s Office of the Inspector General conducted its own study and determined that ShotSpotter-related deployments “rarely produce evidence of a gun-related crime.”
“There’s no way to prove whether ShotSpotter saves lives,” said Ed Vogel, a member of both the Chicago and national Stop ShotSpotter coalition.
In an email to Prism on Dec. 3, Shotspotter asserted that its technology only detects and locates gunfire without identifying shooters or victims. It also emphasized its role in improving police response to unreported gunfire incidents. The company also contends that the absence of physical evidence at a scene doesn’t necessarily indicate a false positive and highlighted the technology’s contribution to evidence collection and lifesaving interventions in various cities.
Critics also worry that ShotSpotter may lead to more aggressive and potentially more violent policing. In April 2021, Chicago police responded to a ShotSpotter alert in the Little Village neighborhood. Officers chased Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old child; he was holding a gun but tossed it to the side and put up his hands moments before Officer Eric Stillman shot and killed him.
Toledo’s death was key in inspiring a local campaign against ShotSpotter, according to Freddy Martinez, a member of the Stop ShotSpotter Coalition and the executive director of Lucy Parson Labs, a nonprofit organization that works against police surveillance.
“I think one of the fundamental problems with [ShotSpotter] is that it sends the police in with amped up, hyper, confrontational responses in primarily Black and brown neighborhoods,” Martinez said. “Police respond assuming that someone is armed, and so it leads to really confrontational types of policing.”
The campaign against ShotSpotter
The effort to remove ShotSpotter in 2021 started with calls to prevent the contract’s renewal in that budget season. That failed, but Vogel said that as the mayoral election ramped up, organizers focused on trying to make it a campaign issue and managed to get Brandon Johnson to commit to canceling the contract. After he won, he followed through.
Even with the contract canceled, there’s more work to do. When the Illinois state police ended their contract with ShotSpotter in 2023, sensors continued to record data for months. ShotSpotter refuses to reveal the location of its sensors even to police and is secretive about when and where it removes the equipment. That makes it difficult to track whether it has actually taken down its sensors or whether police have ceased receiving data. Vogel told Prism that ShotSpotter opponents have filed Freedom of Information Act requests to try to track whether police are still receiving and using ShotSpotter data.
“I don’t think they have any intention of going away,” Vogel said. “I think they are probably trying their best to wait out this mayoral administration.”
Martinez said organizers have also been trying to counter the pushback from City Council by “showing that there’s community support for the mayor’s decision” and by “building evidence that the mayor’s decision is the right one.” They’ve been lobbying for full funding for the GoodKids MadCity Peace Book program, a youth-led initiative that trains young people in conflict resolution and relationship building.
The campaign in Oakland
Chicago’s success has also offered hope to ongoing campaigns elsewhere. ShotSpotter opponents have successfully blocked contracts in Portland, Oregon, and Durham, North Carolina. In October, local organizers unsuccessfully tried to prevent ShotSpotter’s renewal in Oakland, California.
Brian Hofer, chair of the city of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission (PAC), said that in Oakland, ShotSpotter actually causes slower police response times. He said the city’s own data shows that ShotSpotter had a 78% false positive rate in 2023, meaning that police are often being diverted from real emergencies. This could be part of why Oakland’s 911 response times are among the worst in the state, Hofer argued.
Hofer, representing the privacy commission, had put forth a motion in April urging the City Council to abandon ShotSpotter, but the council voted this fall to renew its contract through December 2025 at least.
“We chase the phantom, and then we come back an hour later, and who knows, maybe your medical condition got worse,” said Hofer, who is also executive director of Secure Justice, a nonprofit advocating against state abuse of power. “These are factors that the police and City Council just refuse to consider.”
Hofer believes that the November elections, with an unprecedented nine of 11 City Council seats on the ballot, was a major factor, as officials were afraid of being seen as insufficiently tough on crime (even though crime in Oakland is falling). For similar reasons, building a coalition to oppose ShotSpotter was difficult.
The setback in Oakland and the success in Chicago suggest that organizing against police surveillance requires constant pressure and a favorable political environment.
Chicago activists ran a strong anti-ShotSpotter campaign, including research findings and proposed alternatives. So, when a relatively progressive mayoral candidate was running, they were in a position to push for concrete commitments and to hold the mayor to them. Building on the win against ShotSpotter, though, requires continued pressure—and may hinge in part on whether Johnson (who is very unpopular at the moment) is reelected in 2027.
In the meantime, activists continue to try to educate City Council members and look for alternatives to an expensive and flawed tool.
“I think what’s important to understand is that it’s not just ShotSpotter,” Vogel said. “The problems with ShotSpotter are prevalent throughout all surveillance tech.”