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90 Cities Install A Covert Technology That Listens For Gunshots (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider:
In more than 90 cities across the US, including New York, microphones placed strategically around high-crime areas pick up the sounds of gunfire and alert police to the shooting's location via dots on a city map... ShotSpotter also sends alerts to apps on cops' phones. "We've gone to the dot and found the casings 11 feet from where the dot was, according to the GPS coordinates," Capt. David Salazar of the Milwaukee Police Dept. told Business Insider. "So it's incredibly helpful. We've saved a lot of people's lives."
When three microphones pick up a gunshot, ShotSpotter figures out where the sound comes from. Human analysts in the Newark, California, headquarters confirm the noise came from a gun (not a firecracker or some other source). The police can then locate the gunshot on a map and investigate the scene. The whole process happens "much faster" than dialing 911, Salazar said, though he wouldn't disclose the exact time.
The company's CEO argues their technology deters crime by demonstrating to bad neighborhoods that police will respond quickly to gunshots. (Although last year Forbes discovered that in 30% to 70% of cases, "police found no evidence of a gunshot when they arrived.") And in a neighborhood where ShotSpotter is installed, one 60-year-old man is already complaining, "I don't like Big Brother being in all my business."
When three microphones pick up a gunshot, ShotSpotter figures out where the sound comes from. Human analysts in the Newark, California, headquarters confirm the noise came from a gun (not a firecracker or some other source). The police can then locate the gunshot on a map and investigate the scene. The whole process happens "much faster" than dialing 911, Salazar said, though he wouldn't disclose the exact time.
The company's CEO argues their technology deters crime by demonstrating to bad neighborhoods that police will respond quickly to gunshots. (Although last year Forbes discovered that in 30% to 70% of cases, "police found no evidence of a gunshot when they arrived.") And in a neighborhood where ShotSpotter is installed, one 60-year-old man is already complaining, "I don't like Big Brother being in all my business."
"SWAT team dispatched at every construction site in the city"... Why ? One of the way to tie a sill plate to concrete is to use a powder-actuated nailer.
If you know which areas are high crime areas, why not locate the police precinct there?
I'm not sure fan of big brother, but it's illegal to fire guns within most city limits and anyone doing so I doing something that needs police attention. This is one form of surveillance that seems unobtrusive and doesn't violate any form of privacy. That said, if they start listening with better microphones and storing data, that's a whole other ballgame.
ShotSpotter has had this for over 20 years in cities. In some tinfoil hat just learning about it?
Saved lives? How? The system is only useful after the gun has been fired.
San Francisco Bay Area police departments have been using this technology for years.
ShotSpotter has been used for several years in six Bay Area cities. Police say ShotSpotter has helped them respond more quickly to crime scenes and capture suspects, and provide court evidence to solve homicide cases. Oakland police started using the gunshot detection technology in 2006; it now covers 80 percent of the city, said Capt. Ersie Joyner.
http://www.mercurynews.com/2013/11/11/shotspotter-has-long-history-with-bay-area-police/
Take a brown paper bag, the tall ones you get at liquor stores, blow em up as much as you can, then pop - in the right conditions, in a city, sounds like a fucking gunshot going off.
Says someone with no clue what a real gunshot sounds like.
These have already existed for about a decade. The only update I can see to this is that they use an app to alert police (and possibly that someone works a night shift to analyze the information).
http://gunfreezone.net/index.p...
Passionately Indifferent
one 60-year-old man is already complaining, "I don't like Big Brother being in all my business."
Damn straight! The government needs to stay out of this guy's hard working life shooting off his revolvers near subway entrances downtown.
Is it really a covert technology when it's publicized? I've heard about these installations for years. Even the Summary talks about an article last year in Forbes.
This isn't secret surveillance, it's highly targeted mass surveillance--it only triggers on a very particular thing that involves a high degree of risk to the public. Save your big brother complaints for things like actual internet surveillance, overreaching electronic searches, or better yet for things like reform around the existing big-brother-esque things that cause massive damage to the economy every day. (E.g. bad uses of criminal records or credit reports)
Real lawyers write in C++
"So it's incredibly helpful. We've saved a lot of people's lives."
But you got there after they were shot... :|
Ooooo! "Covert"!!! Big Brother Bad!
My guess is it's not "covert" if you follow city politics and the city council approval at public meetings necessary to buy and install this technology.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"We've saved a lot of people's lives."
They could save even more lives by working on preventing violence, not just gun violence, in the first place.
More money/effort in social programs to help those at risk, more officers actually walking around these areas, more MARKED police cars patrolling the streets (unmarked cars are not about preventing crime, they are for catching people after they break the law).
That is, if they really wanted to save lives.
or a poison dart.
From the Summary:
demonstrating to bad neighborhoods that police will respond quickly to gunshots
If the only places that these devices are placed are in "Bad Neighborhoods", then the Police State is demonstrably racist. Kind of like when Michigan, through its enactment of the Emergency Manager law, effectively deprived over 50% of the State's black residents from casting a vote for city and schoolboard leaders.
is making sure the crime doesn't spill over from the poor neighborhoods to the rich ones. Crime 'fighting' is about containment. If you're old enough to remember the Rodney King riots you might also remember people asking why they just destroyed their own neighborhoods. The reason was the neighborhoods were surrounded by swat teams. The teams didn't move in and quell the riots, they just kept 'em in.
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When the City of Pittsfield installed these the amount of gun shootings went down noticibly. My neighborhood is quiet now. I am now very much pro ShotSpotter.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
...an audio file.
need to be beaten and put in prison. This will help in finding their kind.
I've always liked the idea of sensors over a city to detect gunshots, but police still take some time to arrive to see what is going on.
I think a big improvement on this would be a fleet of camera drones around the city that could be launched as soon as a gunshot was heard, so you could have a view of the scene in under 30 seconds anywhere in a city...
It would also be really helpful for 911 calls so police could get a video of what was happening at the scene of a call even as they were en-route.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't like microphones in my neighborhood. Only criminals have microphones. Microphones don't kill, people do. It's ok for guns to be in my neighborhood, but only white guns. No foreign microphones.
As a gun lover, and privacy lover I can't see how this is a bad thing. Cities have gun regulations making it illegal to fire a firearm. If it is a justified self-defence act the person being attacked would like the police to come anyway. If it's an illegal firing then we want the police to respond.
Make it so it's not possible to be used for any other use than dispatching armed officers/first responders even with a warrant or national security issue though without being put forward as vote by all of the voters. It's reasonable to allow surveillance uses of automated technology as long as the public interest and their privacy is protected.
This tech does more harm than good when dealing with professional killers (governments). This type of audio triangulation is easily defeated, primarily because of how weak the signal detected is (audio, even from a 170 dBm source, is very low energy 1km away). With a single phase array emitter directed at the detectors, you can simulate a gunshot anywhere you want with less than 1 watt output. Such devices have already been built (by both Israel and Germany) to defeat this technology, which has been deployed near battlefields for a lot longer than in cities.
-- sometimes AND gates turn me on.
I used to live in Maryvale, a suburb of Phoenix AZ
The gunfire was getting ridiculous in the late 1990's, with bullets coming through my front window, teenagers shot in front of my house and 'celebratory' gunfire that included people emptying 30 round clips from AKs and AR-15s
The city installed a shot location system and the state passed 'Shannon's Law' that made it a felony to discharge your weapon into the air in a city
It did not help the drive-by situation directly, but it cut down on the overall amount of gunfire
Human analysts in the Newark, California, headquarters confirm the noise came from a gun (not a firecracker or some other source).
How? .22s from a handgun/revovler sound just like a fire cracker. Especially .22 shorts.
You are a fucking moron.
It's a waste of money and only useful for catching the absolute dumbest of criminals... the rest will find ways around it, from using decoys and distractions(folks shooting off guns through a hole in the floor of their car or dropping large firecrackers for example...) to silencers, smart criminals can easily evade such a system... of course the police and the companies that made the systems won't tell you that because they love wasting your tax dollars and are scared to admit that the only real solution is to give up on the worthless expensive war on drugs and the fight for more gun control and instead focus on drug treatment and making it easier to good law abiding citizens to adequately arm themselves for protection.
What's wrong Tyrone? Did you get shot trying to "culturally enrich" some poor woman walking down the street at night?
It's in the fucking press, why on earth is this 'covert'?
"(Although last year Forbes discovered that in 30% to 70% of cases, "police found no evidence of a gunshot when they arrived.")"
The word you're looking for is a 'revolver' or a guy who isn't too lazy to pick up his casings.
Yea because criminals follow the law. Lul.
When your dog shits on the living room carpet, you let him know that was a BAD thing.
Electing Trump was the same as shitting on the country's living room carpet and the only way to get voters to avoid doing that again is to remind them until the behavior changes
Protip: If you don't break the law, you don't have to worry about being """overpoliced""" (That is, you don't have to worry about being a criminal if you are not a criminal). It's that simple.
Criminals or not it has cut down dramatically on the gunfire in the city
Maybe you are not just trolling and would participate in a thought experiment
1. If a city has a high degree of 'celebratory' gun fire, would that provide cover for people using guns to commit crimes?
2. Then would developing a method to reduce non-criminal discharges of weapons make the criminals using weapons more obvious?
3. Once that the criminals are the only ones firing weapons in the city, would it become easier to locate and respond, resulting in less criminal activity (at least using guns in public)?
This has been the case in metro Phoenix, as usual reality trumps nra fear-mongering
Perhaps not, but enforcement gives dignity to the law. People begin to respect the law when it is consistently and quickly enforced.
Keep in mind, a .22 isn't all that loud.
Smart criminals do, at least insofar as it doesn't curtail their criminal enterprise. If you're an intelligent criminal and making good money, you'll avoid drawing police attention to yourself as much as possible. Stupid criminals won't, which just makes them easier to catch.
Yeah, I've never understood the "laws are useless because criminals break laws" approach. You hear it a lot in the Second Amendment community.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Protip: If you don't break the law, you don't have to worry about being """overpoliced""" (That is, you don't have to worry about being a criminal if you are not a criminal). It's that simple.
Protip: The average american commits 3 felonies per day.
The only reason you aren't in jail is because you aren't over-policed.
Meanwhile your apologia does absolutely nothing to address the problem of the police failing to follow-through on serious crimes.
When you don't have a legitimate argument, the key is to raise your hackles, stomp your feet, and scream at the top of your lungs.
That's their modus operandi. This is also why they can be flying a Confederate Flag and shouting their love for country. In Minnesota and Iowa.
Just in time for the fourth of july. So all those fireworks going off will render this expensive tech useless... yet more security theater.
Discontinued:
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Troy-will-turn-off-ShotSpotter-3994808.php
http://www.troyrecord.com/article/TR/20121101/NEWS/311019985
TFA: "At a cost of $250,000, the system was touted as a boon early on, but it has been more than two years and not only does the system not hear all shots, it sometimes issues false reports, either due to sound waves bouncing off terrain or failing to differentiate between shots fired and fireworks, or cars backfiring."
System For Sale:
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Troy-plans-to-sell-ShotSpotter-system-4042434.php
You all lose.
Because.
Your Americans.
I wonder if it can distinguish between a gunshot and a 2-step anti lag system. i wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of false positives.
I'm not sure I agree with you. Just because something is illegal doesn't mean it's 100% wrong in all instances to do something.
They've been using this for decades. Back around 2000 our house was raided by the police after I had turned on a TV show that had the sound of a gun shot. It was too loud and I turned it off. They raided our house alleging that an anonymous call said a woman was being raped, which would give them reason to raid our house. There was no justification to raid our house. I was just a gun shot on a TV show.
Additionally, these microphones also pick up other sounds, like car sounds, which have been used as evidence too. They also pick up conversations.
As a gun lover, and privacy lover I can't see how this is a bad thing.
The bad thing about it is that it is basically an admission of defeat in preventing people from shooting at each other in the first place. It solves the wrong problem. The problem that needs to be solved is how do we prevent the violence before it occurs rather than how do we catch offenders more quickly after the fact. Something like this makes sense in a war zone but if you need to install it during what is ostensibly peacetime then something is terribly wrong with public policy. Peaceful cities don't get that way because of a rapid response police force. They get that way because of good public policy and economic opportunity.
I'm not saying technology like this is a bad idea in a violent locale. Being able to quickly identify, localize, and respond to violent acts is a worthy goal as a general proposition and if the problem already exists you have to deal with it. I'm just saying that there about a thousand other more productive ways to work this problem. Technology like this should be a last resort, not standard procedure.
If it is a justified self-defence act the person being attacked would like the police to come anyway. If it's an illegal firing then we want the police to respond.
While true, it's important to remember that few gunshots actually come from justifiable acts of self defense. The vast majority of shots fired aimed at humans are either attempts at murder or suicide. This is the flaw in this as a matter of public policy. It's like installing smoke detectors instead of ensuring the wiring in your home is safe and proper. While better than nothing it's not really the best approach to solving the problem.
It's reasonable to allow surveillance uses of automated technology as long as the public interest and their privacy is protected.
Agreed. The concerning bit is that people routinely disagree on what constitutes "the public interest" and the importance of privacy. People who are scared tend to have a rather different view of those ideas than those who aren't.
Make up your mind: is it a waste of money or is it useful?
I think most of the time it will be a waste of money. Reason being that it solves the wrong problem. What we should actually want is not a police force that response quicker but public policy that makes it so police response isn't necessary in the first place. Peaceful cities don't get that way by having a hyper-vigilant police force that can respond instantly - if anything that tends to make things worse in most cases. No, cities become peaceful through good public policy and economic opportunity. The details can vary by location but if you need technology like this it's a CLEAR indication that public policy is in bad shape.
Protip: If you don't break the law, you don't have to worry about being """overpoliced""" (That is, you don't have to worry about being a criminal if you are not a criminal). It's that simple.
No it is not that simple. Every single black man I know has had the lovely experience of being harassed by police for driving while black. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. They were not breaking any laws or causing any problems when it happened. Just because you haven't broken any law does not even begin to mean that you do not have to worry about being over policed.
Just because you have nothing to hide doesn't mean you have nothing to fear.
Criminals get caught, you moron.
that's the big one (save for the occasional raid on somebody selling sex toys in Texas).
It's the same thing. Our drug laws are used to contain the poor and keep them from spilling over. If group of poor people wanders into a well to do neighborhood to use their services (parks, schools, etc) odds are one of them has pot on them. The (selectively enforced) laws let the cops crack down when it's convenient. In parts that want it racial segregation can be maintained without bringing down the feds. Hell, if you look at the history of making drugs illegal it was done for pot to chase Mexicans out and for Opium to crack down on the Chinese.
None of this is racism for racism's sake. At the end of the day it's to create lower classes that it's OK to abuse and divide the working class. Works too.
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Yeah, I've never understood the "laws are useless because criminals break laws" approach.
Well, that's you. I've never understood the "solution to every problem is more government" approach you totalitarians love, myself.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There would hardly be any crime anymore
Electing Hillary would have ben like the dog shitting in your mouth. It would have been a deplorable situation.
Sweet strawman bruh.
Shannon's Law was directed specifically at celebratory gunfire, such as firing into the air for New Year. This is a feature of, um, a certain culture. Shannon was a young girl who went outside with her family to see the New Year in and suddenly dropped dead of a round that had been fired miles away.
...heard of home stereos, car stereos, jamboxes, guitar amps, PA systems, etc.
Most pistols are around 150db or more, much less and I doubt this system would detect it.
They could ID the type of gun 15+ years ago. I remember when the city near bye installed it. They said it was accurate within a block and they could tell the type of gun and between guns and firecrackers and car backfires.
By now I would expect the thing to tell you in more detail about the guns used. If 1 person has a hand gun and the other rifle ... it will know who shot first.
How many people think it's fun to cause a bunch of armed and anxious police officers to quickly converge on their own location? Seems like a self-correcting problem.
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I've never seen an AK or AR-15 that uses "clips" before. That's new!
"...We've saved a lot of people's lives."
Sure..., after they were shot?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
I'm just saying that's not their main purpose; any more than prison's main purpose is to rehabilitate people.
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and calling someone a racist aren't even remotely the same thing. If we're going to tackle a problem we have to acknowledge it's existence. You can't really believe Philando Castile was shot just because the cop thought he was reaching for his gun. Hell, the worst thing was the cop probably really thought he was. The cop was more likely to believe a black man would shoot him than hand over his driver's license.
That's institutionalized racism in a nutshell. When you don't even realize you're doing it. When you can say with a straight face "my black friends are fine but..." and mean it. Are law enforcement practices are a huge part of that.
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Because the shootings that gain national media attention tend to be committed with illegally owned weapons. Gun restrictions already do not work to prevent shootings.
Now you can go ahead and strawman me with 'bur hur decriminalize murder,' as if just owning a gun is comparable to murder. Let's just ban things instead of dealing with a problem, we need another War On Fill-In-The-Blank, right?
No.
I agree. So let's stop making and propagating excuses for the DNC pushing the only candidate who could lose to Donald Fucking Trump.
http://www.thecountryshed.com/...
http://www.sinopa.ee/sor/bo001...
you are welcome
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Shoving the guns up the arses of idiots who don't understand that they're not a toy is another solution. Do you have any suggestions what to do with people that fire off firearms in a reckless manner?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That is simply not true. In fact, it is the exact opposite of true. Eighty percent of the mass shootings in the last three decades were committed using legally-purchased weapons.
http://time.com/4367592/orland...
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyli...
You are welcome on my lawn.
In all fairness you can use a stripper clip to load the magazine, but the AK requires a magazine to fire more than one round.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
Part and parcel of the GOP strategy is to identify potential opposition leaders and work to discredit them. They have been working on Bill and Hillary for the past 30 years, and they are just getting started on Bernie and his Wife by digging into the finances of a failed school that she was involved in.
If you are going to ignore their strategy then you will always be swayed by it. What are the other options? To either abandon all critical thinking like republican supporters have, or get a new candidate every few years so they cannot spread enough lies about them in the election cycle
A .22 rifle comes in more like 130.
The Americans here seem to take it as normal that people shoot each other in the street.
Weird.
Sure man, and that's why the legislature of Tennessee had a fit over a Muslim foot bath, oh wait, no, it was a mop sink.
It's just a bogeyman, another of the things that riles up the base in Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Alabama, and the like, fears of the dreaded "Sharia" law while simultaneously lamenting how they can't do things the "Christian" way, as the Constitution intended.
Well, that's you. I've never understood the "solution to every problem is more government" approach you totalitarians love, myself.
So... no laws, ever? For anyone? At all?
Because the examples the OP listed about Phoenix, AZ sound as reasonable and "minimal government."
She was a shitty candidate that took tens of millions of dollars from private parties for herself and hundreds of millions for her foundation.
She offered nothing except cheap platitudes and was missing from public for months.
She was also up against the last electable GOP candidate to ever run for the office.
She didn't lose because she was smeared, she lost because she couldn't even win the primary without cheating and refused to try and win over the nearly half of the party that voted against her in the primary.
when we took action during the civil rights movement. The point is to get folks to take action, particularly at the polls, by making sure the narrative is steered away from "Everything's fine now and there's no racism or oppression" when nothing could be further from the truth.
So yeah, it's helps.
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Is it against the law to play back the sound effect of a gunshot? Perhaps even at high volume?
Look! It's the Keystone Cops!!
I never said the clips are good for anything else than quick filling of the magazine. Then again,the clips for most WW1 rifles had exactly the same function, the only difference was that the magazines generally weren't detachable.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
cops aint going to get there in time, or do shit but mop up.
Yes I totally agree, that was my point. But wouldn't it be better for them to be able to be much less hesitant moving in because they knew exactly what had happened and if there were still armed suspects on-scnee? It's certainly better for the people who are shot that medics can move in more quickly.
and surveillance societies, by the government already far too big
Here again I actually agree with you (well except the part where I suck balls or want anything to do with the corporate state which I am way more against than you are).
This is not surveillance though. The drones are asleep most of the time, only go out when responding to a specific gunshot location or a 911 request from a citizen where you know there's a problem already and someone needs help. That is not surveillance it's simply quicker response and data flow to units that are going there anyway, to provide more details than gunshot sensors or a caller alone may provide.
This is a perfect match for drone use because drones really can't be out for long periods anyway so they literally CANNOT be used for classic surveillance like a CCTV can, and are cheap enough you could easily blanket a city with great coverage for very little cost.
They are also far better for this use because CCTV's simply cannot be looking everywhere or can be easily disabled ahead of time, whereas drones being very mobile are much less prone to being blocked from monitoring the aftermath of a shooting - including cars and/or people leaving the scene.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That would be useless against the kind of criminal that is most problematic right now, the kind that do not care if they get caught because they are on a suicidal mission.
It would be extremely useful for the kinds of attacks we have seen it cities, with a small number of attackers shooting civilians. You would have a drone in the area super quickly and it could follow any suspect(s) found, but even MORE importantly than that lets police know where attackers are NOT. Lots of people wait for medial care while police clear an area, but using the drones police could know in the minutes (or tens of minutes) it took to arrive that an area was safe to send medical aid and offices into and through.
You can get a view of the scene if you like but that's not going to solve the problem. What's likely to solve the problem is people able to shoot back...
Yes I totally agree and that is a great idea, I would also be happier if everyone were armed and also think we'd not see as many attacks, certainly not with the same degree of success...
But imagine this - what if all of the people in the area could ALSO see this drone footage? They would know if an attacker was on the way to where they were and could find good cover to shoot from. It would prevent people from being caught unawares. Imagine it being like an Amber Alert, only now your phone is pulling up a video feed and map automatically comparing your location to the location of known attackers...
That last part is probably a pipe dream as the police are super-reluctant to share that kind of data real time, but I think because it would be data about the attackers and not police positions, they could be persuaded.
The drones could only be up for 30 minutes or so but that's probably enough time to resolve the situation, especially in a world where everyone around the attacker was more fully aware.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Police catch shooters because of it and it is in the news all the time here. It's no secret. I wish it worked better since I live across the river in Iowa and we don't have it yet. I love the idea of this system
Those microphones are also attached to cameras!!!
I thought smartphones are already listening to important stuff in addition to the "ok google" phrase. It is a no-brainer: they already have their mics on all the time, they have internet synced clock and they have GPS. It is all too easy to make them take note of loud sharp noises and send location info to interested parties.
And it would also be very nice if the PUBLIC could get a video of what happened when one of those "extremely rare" incidents involving the POLICE shooting an innocent CITIZEN. ...
Then we could all monitor what's going down, and the police don't get to filter or censor the video of their own acts too.
Just a thought
I wish they'd use them to detect dogs barking during prohibited hours.
Trump voters are retarded. Discuss.
Facts can't be discussed.
Just for the record, wikipedia claims the incident that killed Shannon Smith occured during June, not during New Year celebrations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon's_law_(Arizona)
The magazines use clips, not the firearms themselves. Your pictures do not prove the prior poster wrong.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Cue trolls everywhere playing gunshot sounds on their cellphones.
its a step in the right direction.
Laws that attempt to restrict a fundamental human right are useless. Is that so hard?
You're talking past each other and both of you can be right because shootings /= mass shootings.
Yeah, I've never understood the "laws are useless because criminals break laws" approach. You hear it a lot in the Second Amendment community.
If you are referring to "when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns." Well, that is one of those word games that proves itself. What it is really going after is that by outlawing guns, law abiding citizens are not allowed to have guns. If you wade past the extremist (AKA the absolutely no gun regulations crowd) you will find that most people agree to background check as long as it is reasonable. When I took my Concealed Weapons class, even my instructor called "constitutional carry" asinine.
~Less think, more do
forgot the number of the tv series)
Funny because I have an extensive black family that doesn't have that problem. You do not get pulled over for being black, you get pulled over because there was cause,
That's just bullshit and there is copious evidence to prove it. People get pulled over routinely because of the color of their skin. This isn't a debate. It happens and if you deny it happens you are either lying or delusional. Happens to black people and latinos so often it borders on cliche. Perhaps you live in a location where it is relatively uncommon. Those do exist. But to pretend it doesn't happen is to have your head in the sand at best.
not to mention it's very hard to see race when someone is speeding past you at 60mph, from an angle in the dark.
There are PLENTY of times when it is trivial to note the ethnicity of the driver/occupants.
I'm white and I've been pulled over many times, oftentimes without receiving a ticket.
Ahh, we have an answer.
not enough people report gunshots when they're heard, for reasons or not. not enough people can discern a gunshot from a firework like well-made software can (should be able to).
i just always figured that cellphone masts were being used for this, along with being able to created 3d images of the area within their triangle.
As we all know. But aren't allowed to say.
Yeah, I've never understood the "laws are useless because criminals break laws" approach. You hear it a lot in the Second Amendment community.
The simile I've heard is "if the problem you have is yahoos driving through your town doing 100, reducing the speed limit from 25 to 5 won't solve your problems". The perception (and reality, in my opinion) is that the law abiding are saddled with restrictions ranging from hassles to harassment to criminalization (yes, jail time), while the people doing the shooting/wounding/killing aren't deterred The restrictions are then deemed ineffective, and *more* laws are passed. Lather, rinse repeat. Here in California, it's been stated the the goal is to eliminate "gun culture". What's happening is that the law abiding gun culture is being hounded out of existence, leaving criminal gun culture as remainder
I've seen it at work in Memphis as well.
I'd never seen one before and asked my taxi driver who just happened to be an off duty cop what that was on some of the light poles. His response, "shot detector, tells us where someone probably just got hurt so we can get there faster", sounds like a pretty good reason to me.
Now that was downtown Memphis... another time I arrived at my hotel for the week about 20 minutes from downtown and there was a mobile shot detector in the parking lot so I asked the hotel driver what was going on (we know each other as I stay there quite a bit) and he told me "some asshole has been driving around shooting at churches, but they caught him last night so it will be gone on Monday" and it was.
This site has been following ShotSpotter tech for a couple of years now:
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.c...
Near as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a huge reduction in gun crime as a result of this technology - mostly due to the fact that many gun crimes are committed with stolen guns (that are ditched after a shooting) and the fact that criminals don't hang around after a shooting waiting for the cops.
This technology stinks of Redflex and the red light camera fiasco there...
Cause your instructor would be out of a job. Follow the money.
Sure, I was addressing the poster, and his posting history, not this specific example.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
A more apt comparison would be, "Yahoos are driving through your town doing 100, so the only solution is to get rid of all speed limits".
This is basically the argument from the pro-gun lobby, who by the way, want power to revert to the states except not the power to restrict gun ownership in any way. Federalism for thee, but not for me, in other words.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm not saying it is a good idea, but I am pointing out a potential issue that could arise. Contingencies are something that ought not to be ignored, no matter how trivial.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Says the one who thinks assuming things about others is actually a logical rebuttal to compensate for the inability to consider the fact that different building densities, and atmospheric conditions affect how a sound is perceived.. I actually have been shooting, at ranges - don't get to do it often, but it is a lot of fun. I go with my brother, he shoots a pistol, I stick to a .22 caliber rifle. I'd have to be literally deaf to not know what a gunshot sounds like. When I did what I did in the story, the sound echoed like crazy, scared the crap out of people (inadvertently, of course) - even this crackhead who was sitting on the steps to the subway, who had previously been cursing off everybody walking near her, shut up. 0_0
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
A more apt comparison would be, "Yahoos are driving through your town doing 100, so the only solution is to get rid of all speed limits".
You conveniently left out the 2nd half of my argument: the change in laws doesn't reduce the actual murder rate, it only makes new criminals (with victim-less crimes); when the new laws are ineffectual, then *more* laws are passed, making *more* new crimes/criminals.
This is basically the argument from the pro-gun lobby, who by the way, want power to revert to the states except not the power to restrict gun ownership in any way. Federalism for thee, but not for me, in other words.
Similarly to the rights in the 1st, 4th and 5th amendment? Why shouldn't those also be subject to varying enforcement in varying states? Ha! Slashdot sig quote: "The solution of this problem is trivial and is left as an exercise for the reader."
A typical gunshot is over 150db, a 9mm pistol runs about 160db. That would be one amazing paper bag. Unbelieveable, actually.
Yeah I wouldn't be shocked if that wouldn't be detected reliably as a gunshot by this system. That's probably OK, essentially no one uses a 22lr long gun in violent crimes. The guns criminals use (pistols) run about 20-30 db higher which doesn't look like much, but 160db is actually 1000x louder than 130db .....
If laws are outlawed only outlaws will have laws!
Man, you really need that seminar!
So... the existing laws failed to stop 80% of shootings and your solution is... more laws?
Have you seen the Sorceror's Apprentice short. That's like saying Mickey's problem was a shortage of walking brooms.
The six states with the lowest rates of gun-related death are Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, which all have relatively strict gun control laws.
Yes, a change in laws does reduce gun deaths.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They are also underrepresented in the police shooting numbers.
Black men are about 30% of police shooting victims, but commit about 40% of violent crimes. This reflects the fact that black communities are underserved by police. Short term we should be working to get the black % of police shooting number up to 40%, not down.
Banning what? Celebratory gun firing? Do you think it's "big government" to ban people shooting into the air in populated areas? Who are you fighting? No one is coming to get your guns here pal. They're only asking for them to be used responsibly.
Additionally, these microphones also pick up other sounds, like car sounds, which have been used as evidence too. They also pick up conversations.
Could you source that info? I'm not saying they can't, but it seems unlikely that microphones on poles and building tops that are designed to be triggered by 140+db gunshots, but not by 120db thunder are being used to record even loud 70db conversations.
Not to mention, if they are talking that loud, they should expect people to overhear.
HA! Thanks for that. :D
They installed this Puerto Rico a few years ago. Hefty price tag for it I believe it was a 1million a year for 1^2km? or 10^2 km
They had a really high rate of false positives and police started going to crime scene since the only thing they found was old broken cars or nothing most of the time.
A few times they found shell casings and after all the years I believe only once did it work but the police officer was a minute away.
Honestly without a published accuracy rate of how many shots are detected vs not I still don't believe they are that great.
Solid point
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
If you read the book to which the article you linked is citing, you'd know that isn't accurate. The book is about vague laws and overreaching LOEs and prosecutors.
It would be accurate to say: The only reason you aren't in jail is because the police aren't targeting *you*.
Sometime in the 90s in St. Louis there was an incident where someone was killed while putting on the golf course by a stray bullet. It took them a while to realize and prove that a bit more than a mile away on the other side of the Mississippi river, an officer had (allegedly) accidentally overshot the target at the police rifle range. The point is, they really need to expand these laws to all shots within a couple of miles or so of a civilized area, no exceptions.
gunfire seems too suboptimal as a use of the audio spectrum for shannon's law to matter
You cannot put that in the rifle and fire it, so your example is flawed. Sure, you can use a "clip" to help speed load a magazine, but you must remove the clip from the magazine before attaching the magazine to the rifle for shooting. A true "clip" is used in the firearm while shooting, such as that used on WWII M1 Garand's. Where the clip was loaded into the rifle, and when the last shot was fired, the clip was ejected out. Otherwise, the use a "Clip" in the form that you showed, is just a version of a speed-loader for a box magazine. The rifles mentioned however fire from a box magazine sans any "clips".
His statement didn't go anywhere near the extreme that you're stating. There's a big difference between anarchy and minimal government.
Just another day in Paradise