Holyoke will soon adopt Shotspotter, a controversial gun violence detection system
In an attempt by Mayor Joshua Garcia to reduce violent crime, the city will try out Shotspotter in a two year trial period, but the technology has faced intense criticism in other cities.
Amanda Westlake
At the nearly five hour long Holyoke City Council meeting on October 4, community members and city councilors engaged in heated discussion before voting to accept a grant to fund Shotspotter, a technology that automatically alerts police whenever it believes gunshots are fired.
With five homicides by gun this year, the two year trial period will reveal whether the advanced AI leads to more lives saved or lost.
Holyoke is a working class, majority Hispanic city, and the areas Shotspotter will be installed in are its most diverse. City officials, led by Mayor Joshua Garcia, hope Shotspotter will reduce high levels of crime. “ShotSpotter is not necessarily the solution to gun violence, but it can make a difference by alerting police in real time that a firearm has been discharged,” Garcia wrote in an email to the Student Dispatch. “Seconds count when it comes to gun violence.”
But while police praise the technology as live-saving, studies show false positive rates as high as 86 percent—suggesting the majority of alerts are nothing but a waste of police time. Community members also worry about annual six figure prices and the tech’s potential to encourage over-policing, especially in minority communities.
Garcia holds councilors hostage with funding threat
Shotspotter is pitched as an early detection system that instantly alerts police departments to gun violence. When Shotspotter microphones detect possible gunfire, the information is sent to a center of live analysts. Around 98 percent of initial reports are discarded, but if analysts believe a gun has been fired, they send a report to police in real time. Later, Shotspotter generates a “detailed forensic report” for use in court.
The dozens of cities that have already adopted Shotspotter have reported mixed results.
Chicago, which signed a $33 million Shotspotter contract in 2018, is a particularly dire example. According to a report by the Chicago Office of the Inspector General, alerts rarely led to evidence of a gun-related crime. In the 17-month period analyzed, there were more than 50,000 false alarms—a staggering 86 percent false positivity rate.
The report also found that frequency of Shotspotter reports led to more stops and pat downs in areas that had more alerts, indicating over-policing in predominantly poor, Black, and Brown neighborhoods.
Even more worryingly, Spotshotter can lead to arrests and imprisonment with little evidence.
Chicago grandfather Michael Williams spent a year in jail for the murder of 25-year old Safarian Herring with a Shotspotter report as the only evidence. His case was eventually dismissed on request of the prosecution, who said it did not meet the burden of proof. Williams’s arrest demonstrates the pitfalls of a criminal justice and policing system that relies on questionably accurate technology.
Shotspotter’s problems are also not limited to the midwest. Holyoke neighbor Pittsfield implemented shotspotter in 2017 and resident Meg Bossong wrote in an email to the Student Dispatch that the technology has been “deeply inaccurate.” A study by Pittsfield City Councilor Nicholas Caccamo found that out of 469 reports, there was a 70 percent false positive rate, with a 22 percent true positive rate and the remaining eight percent undeterminable.
Pittsfield originally paid for Shotspotter with a grant from Berkshire Health Systems, similarly to what Holyoke is doing now. When the funding dried up, the city was left to foot the bill themselves with taxpayer money. In addition to the $240,000 subscription fee per year, they also have to pay for ongoing equipment costs. Bossong called the program a “massive waste of city resources with no realized benefit to public safety.”
Mayor Joshua Garcia is aware of negative reports from Chicago and other cities, but hopes that things will be different in Holyoke. Garcia wrote, “Holyoke isn't Chicago and other communities have given ShotSpotter high marks, saying it was saving lives. We'll see how it plays out.”
At the contentious October meeting, 9 out of 13 councilors voted to accept the Department of Justice grant to fund Shotspotter, but they did so under duress. Shotspotter will cost Holyoke $150,000 a year for two square miles, half of which will be covered by the grant.
Garcia denied being the force behind Shotspotter’s upcoming implementation. He told the Student Dispatch in an email, “A previous mayor and a previous City Council made the decision to try ShotSpotter. My administration is tasked with implementing the technology.” But if they had voted no, Garcia, who took office last year and is the city’s first Latino mayor, threatened to use American Rescue Plan Act funds to fully cover the cost of Shotspotter, instead of allocating the funds elsewhere.
The pros and cons of Shotspotter
Holyoke officials who support Shotspotter hope that it will help address the city’s relatively high rates of gun-related crime.
City Councilor Kevin Jourdain, who voted to accept the grant, said that there are currently an average of two gunshots a day in Holyoke, but that the majority are not reported. Jourdain said that Shotspotter will be useful because the “technology is far more accurate than people sticking their head out a window” to hear and report gunshots.
Jourdain said that the knowledge that Shotspotter could be a deterrent to those who might fire guns—potential offenders “don’t want to get caught,” so won’t shoot if they “know this technology exists.”
But opponents of Shotspotter say that the software’s inaccuracy cancels out any possible benefits. It is difficult to determine exactly how accurate Shotspotter is, because the only reports come from either police departments and the Shotspotter company itself. Although the corporation claims a 97 percent accuracy rate, there is no objective scientific study to back their claims up. Reports from Chicago, Pittsfield, and elsewhere look much different.
City Councilor Kocayne Givner, who was not present at the October meeting but would have voted yes, said that although she is hopeful that Shotspotter will reduce crime, their position as a publicly financed company disturbs her. She said that because of their financial incentive to perform well, she doesn’t completely trust the company’s self-reporting.
Shotspotter has been accused of manually changing data, such as the location of alleged gunshots or the classification of sounds. In Michael Williams’s case, the Shotspotter report that put him behind bars was originally identified as a firework and was in a different location—until it was manually altered by a Shotspotter analyst.
Other opponents to Shotspotter believe that gunshot-sensing technology will not reduce violent crime because it won’t address the underlying issues that lead to violence. Instead, they argue the funds could be better used elsewhere in the city’s budget.
Katie Talbot is the Western Massachusetts regional organizer for Neighbor to Neighbor, a progressive grassroots organizing group. She said that Shotspotter will not solve Holyoke’s problems because although the technology allows officers to respond to incidents of violence, it does not stop them from happening. She said, “We know that ShotSpotter doesn't change the underlying causes [of violence]. It really is just another form of over policing.”
Talbot said that to reduce gun violence, the city should use its money to address the housing crisis and create meaningful youth programs. She said, “When we look to other spots that have approached crime and gun violence in a holistic [way], they've seen a long term decrease in [violence].”
In Chicago, these community investments have produced real results. A 2014 summer jobs program that provided jobs to low income youth decreased their violent crime rates by 43 percent over 16 months. In 2019, another study demonstrated that an emergency financial assistance program led to a 51 percent reduction in violent crime arrests for participants.
Holyoke resident Jose Adastra, who testified at the October meeting against Shotspotter, agreed with Talbot: “The minute that we stop trying to fund the police and give them new technology and start alternative community resources, that's when it'll get better.”
Racial and economic divides
Many community members worry that Shotspotter will have a disproportionate negative effect on low-income communities and communities of color. Shotspotter will be installed in two square miles of downtown Holyoke, including the predominately Latinx and low-income neighborhood The Flats. According to City Councilor Jourdain, these two square miles are where 80 percent of gunshots are reported.
When Shotspotter is implemented, these neighborhoods may see higher levels of police interaction. Talbot said that the police will likely use Shotspotter data to categorize neighborhoods based on their perceived “risk level.” She said, “If an area has a lot of ShotSpotter alarms, then it's considered a dangerous area, and when the police go in, they go in with a heavy presence.”
Holyoke resident Owen Broadhurst worries that Shotspotter will lead to hostile altercations between officers and residents. Police may show up to neighborhoods expecting to encounter weapons when the alert was actually set off by a car backfiring or fireworks, which may lead to unnecessary police violence. Broadhurst referred to the technology as “phrenology for acoustics.”
The Holyoke police already have past allegations of excessive force. In 2014, three officers violently beat a 12 year old boy who was trying to stop his neighbor from committing suicide. A city faced a lawsuit over the incident in 2020.
Two-year trial period will reveal Shotspotter’s impact
At the October 4 meeting, the Holyoke City Council voted to accept the DOJ grant that will pay for half of Shotspotter for two years. During this trial period, the city will collect data to decide whether it is worth continuing the expensive program.
According to Mayor Garcia, the city will record data including “response times, apprehension of lawbreakers, discovery or recovery of firearms and the number — up or down — of gun-related incidents.” Then, they will use that information to “decide if the investment is paying off or if the program should be discontinued.”
When other cities have done similarly, some have concluded that Shotspotter was not worth its high price tag. Dayton, Ohio recently ended their Shotspotter contract due to changes in state law and insufficient evidence on the technology’s impact. But other cities, including Chicago, Denver, and New York City, have recently decided to renew their contracts despite activist pushback.
When Shotspotter’s trial period concludes, Holyoke will have to decide if the advanced technology was an effective public safety solution or high-tech waste of funds.