Things are not looking great for SoundThinking, which hasn’t been able to outrun the reputation it earned when it was still known as ShotSpotter.
More and more major cities are choosing to ditch the technology because it simply does not appear to be worth paying for. What lots of cities are finding out is that the tech cannot reliably detect gunshots, does very little to contribute to criminal investigations, and wastes limited resources by sending officers to gunshot alerts that generally result in a bunch of wasted time.
With evidence piling up the tech doesn’t have any meaningful impact on violent crime rates, the company’s PR pitch has shifted focus. It’s new talking point is that it isn’t the number of cases closed, but the number of lives saved due to its gunshot detectors.
The theory is this: a large percentage of gunshots go unreported. 911 callers may call about gunshots they think they’ve heard but plenty of guns are being fired without being heard or without being reported by other residents. According to its new sales pitch, ShotSpotter helps provide faster EMS response, which means fewer people are dying from being shot.
The company claims this is true even though there’s not a single city or law enforcement agency in the nation that actively tracks this data. The latest damning report on the tech — issued by the New York City comptroller — specifically attacked this line of thinking, which was used by the NYPD itself to defend tech it couldn’t actually justify with the minimal data it has (almost inadvertently) collected on ShotSpotter alerts.
Apparently, facts don’t matter when the bottom line is on the line. ShotSpotter’s current CEO, Ralph Clark, recently had a letter to the editor in defense of his company posted by The Mercury News. The reason for Clark’s indirect intervention is this: Oakland is working on a new budget and a lot of opposition has been raised against extending the city’s ShotSpotter contract.
And here’s what the CEO has offered in defense of his company’s tech:
From 2022 to 2023, more than 380 lives were saved because of this technology — gunshot victims found from the alert despite no 911 call.
Some have asked the City to cut the service, which would be dangerous. Less than 20% of gunfire is reported by 911. This is where ShotSpotter steps in. We don’t want to return to the days when our police don’t know when — and exactly where — gunfire is occurring.
He could have put anything in there. Any number at all. Any time period at all. It wouldn’t have mattered. Ralph Clark is just tossing out numbers like they mean something, even when they’re completely devoid of context.
While I realize most sites won’t publish excessively long letters to the editor and that the company’s CEO is certainly aware a wall of text rarely changes anyone’s mind, there’s absolutely zero information here that clarifies what’s being claimed in the that first sentence.
Is this just in Oakland? Is this across the nation? If it’s just Oakland, where is ShotSpotter getting this data? I can guarantee Oakland law enforcement isn’t tracking this metric.
Are EMS units arriving on the scene faster? Or does this just mean that, at some point, an EMS unit arrived where a shot was reported by ShotSpotter? Is ShotSpotter tracking outcomes of ER visits to ensure lives were saved? Is the Oakland PD doing this? Where is this number coming from and, just as importantly, how significant is it in terms of total number of shots detected by ShotSpotter mics?
What we do know for certain is that cops using this tech aren’t tracking this sort of information. In fact, in most cases, they aren’t doing any tracking at all so they don’t really know whether or not the tech is actually having any impact on anything. It’s usually city oversight entities doing this dirty work. And when they do it, they always find the tech is consuming lots of time and resources without providing any verifiable return on investment, especially not in terms of crime reduction.
If this is the best ShotSpotter has to offer, it doesn’t deserve reconsideration. If Ralph Clark would like to publish the underlying stats (along with their source) for this claim, I’ll be more than happy to publish them here as well. But, until the company actually has something substantial and verifiable to say about its service, the most it should try to credibly claim is that it’s capable of detecting gunshots. And if that’s all it is, it certainly isn’t worth spending money on until it can demonstrate utility beyond that.
