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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."
ShotSpotter has had this for over 20 years in cities. In some tinfoil hat just learning about it?
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/
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.
Un-surprisingly, a system like this has been in place in Maryvale Az for about 2 decades and they have not seen any rise in swat teams being sent to construction sites
I mean really, are pro-gun asshats willing to believe any vomit that they spew?
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
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
It's probably less expensive to move a sensor that listens for gunshots than an entire police precinct. It also doesn't really matter where you locate the precinct either since the police can take their cars and patrol wherever they're most needed. You'd want to have your precincts located in such a way that it makes it easy and efficient for police to deploy anywhere in the city, otherwise if you locate them nearest the worst neighborhoods you'll probably not have a very even distribution as bad neighborhoods tend to be clustered.
Not really. Unless you really have a barrel length of zero and a round of zero mass, there will be a sonic boom from the bullet for at least a little while. A microphone staged downrange will pick up two cracks: one from the sonic boom of the bullet and a second one from the charge exploding. The bullet is supersonic, so the sound from it originates closer to the microphone, whereas the gun is stationary and its sound will arrive later. The reverse is true if the microphone is behind the gun, and there's an area of ambiguity if you're perpendicular to the muzzle on either side, which is why multiple microphones.
Firecrackers, nail guns, and anything else that doesn't send a supersonic projectile doesn't have that double crack. It's not hard to tell by ear in many cases and certainly not too hard to automate classification to some acceptable level of false alarm rates.
Slight nitpick, sub-sonic .22LR rounds are a thing.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
There's lots of common handgun ammunition that is subsonic. The .45 Colt and .45 ACP come to mind immediately because I have sidearms chambered for those cartridges. There's also plenty of "specialty" sub-sonic ammunition for other common cartridges like 9mm. There's even subsonic rifle ammunition that is not too hard to find.
I've seen the reasons for these subsonic cartridges to exist in the modern era. First is that they are cheap. It takes less metal and allows for lower tolerances for subsonic ammunition. Second is that there seems to be a lot of people doing cowboy action shooting and other hobbies that like the old style guns. Supersonic ammunition is a fairly recent development, especially for handguns. Third, for a firearm suppressor to work properly subsonic ammunition must be used.
The .45 ACP is apparently quite popular among the special forces types because it can be effectively suppressed. It bothers me when I see people that will make YouTube videos that "show" how ineffective firearm suppressors are by putting one on a gun and fire off supersonic ammunition. I can tell that the ammunition is supersonic by it's distinctive "crack" as it leaves the barrel. Both sides do it too. The "pro-gun" people will want to show that guns can still be detected by things like these shot detectors. The "anti-gun" side do this to show that no one would want them since they don't work, therefore they can be banned, or something.
One thing that I wonder about is the number of false negatives. People talk about the false positives with things like firecrackers or something being detected as a shot but what of a shot that was not detected? Isn't that a thing? I remember reading somewhere of someone that shot another and not waking sleeping children in the next room by wrapping a revolver with a pillow. Had to have been something subsonic like a .45 Colt or .38 Special.
I have to wonder if the criminals will figure this out. Wrapping a revolver in a pillow might be rather conspicuous but there might be other ways to suppress the noise with something to the point it would not be detected by these shot spotters. In the US federal law the possession of a firearm suppressor is tightly controlled. Using a firearm suppressor in the commission of a crime can get a 30 year sentence. I'd think though that in the interest of getting away with murder someone might not be all that concerned about an additional 30 year sentence.
There is a movement in the USA to get firearm suppressors regulated like shotguns (no fees, must be 18 years old, show ID, not have a criminal history, done with 5 minute phone call) instead of like machine guns ($200 tax, fingerprints, extensive background check, 2 years wait for processing, signatures from sheriff, psychiatrist, and your mom, and usually involves a lawyer to get the paperwork in order). This movement is growing because of the obvious hearing protection advantages from suppressors. If that happens then criminals could get them more often by theft, falsifying records, straw purchase, etc.
I'm not a fan of banning suppressors because criminals might use them in a crime. If that were true then we'd be banning a lot of things because criminals use them to harm others. I'm just thinking of how ineffective these shot spotter devices could be in the not too distant future. I think people are relying too much on government and technology to save them from what they fear. That's just not healthy thinking, IMHO.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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.