ShotSpotter roll-out delayed in Boston
The Boston Globe’s Donovan Slack reports today that the acoustic gunfire-detection system ShotSpotter won’t be in place in Boston “until October, months later than expected and too late to stave off the usual summer rise in gunfire and homicides.”
I’m neither surprised nor disappointed. I’m not surprised because Boston, like most cities in the Northeast, is a difficult place in which to get things done. I’m not disappointed because I think ShotSpotter is borderline useless. The $1.5 million the city is spending on it would have been used hiring a handful of more cops. Cops have this ability to deter and solve crime.
Mr. Slack writes that Boston’s ShotSpotter adventure started with councilor Rob Consalvo:
The city first began looking at the technology more than a year ago, when Councilor Rob Consalvo asked the mayor and police officials to look at ShotSpotter, which was credited with a 31 percent reduction in violent crime in North Charleston, S.C., and with helping police in Gary, Ind., to catch shooting suspects with guns still in their hands.
ShotSpotter Inc. apparently loves to disseminate fuzzy data, but from what I understand the company’s system was installed in 2002 in North Charleston. Below are crime statistics I lifted from North Charleston’s police web site:
| 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | Jan - Jul 2006 | |
| Murder | 10 | 17 | 12 | 6 | 11 | 12 |
| Rape (Forcible) | 85 | 104 | 93 | 69 | 82 | 49 |
| Robbery | 415 | 441 | 414 | 407 | 519 | 393 |
| Aggravated Assault | 894 | 798 | 809 | 807 | 849 | 473 |
| Index Violent | 1404 | 1360 | 1328 | 1289 | 1461 | 926 |
Please note that the last column is for half of 2006, not the entire year. According to Charleston City Paper there were 29 homicides in North Charleston in 2006.
I really don’t see much of a reduction in violent crime, and certainly not a 31% drop.
A wordy but rather light-on-facts pamphlet from ShotSpotter, Inc. provides us with the following quote, uttered by “Sgt. Karen Cordray of the North Charleston Police Department’s Crime Analysis Unit”:
“ShotSpotter picks up incidents that people just don’t phone in. I think it’s your eyes and ears on the street – a good thing to have! In one area of the City a combination of ShotSpotter and proactive patrol work reduced violent crime by 35%. “
The old “in one area.” Impressive.
The pamphlet continues:
Reports show that in the first year, police made 18 arrests as a result of ShotSpotter, six during the initial response and 12 after follow-up investigations.
Sadly, the pamphlet doesn’t name any of those reports.
Here’s a more reasonable statistic than the 31% drop in violent crime:
Cities in which the system is deployed have seen a marked decrease in gunfire — anywhere from 32% (North Charleston, SC)
It’s from a press release put out by ShotSpotter Inc.
There’s a bit of a difference between “gunfire” and “violent crime.” In fact, Boston Police Department doesn’t even report gunfire statistics, but “shootings.” A shooting is when somebody is actually shot.
I can’t say I admire the due diligence exerted by Councilor Consalvo and his fellow city councilors on this matter.
My first shot at ShotSpotter: ShotSpotter may not be quite what Brian McGrory has been led to believe.
