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."

Comments

opposing article

[kqc7011]

http://gunfreezone.net/index.p...

Re:Next in the news...

[TWX]

A powder-actuated nailer doesn't use a traditional barrel or fire a round that files through the air, so the sound made is different.

A system like this is going to have some false-positives, and is going to miss some actual gunshots. This is a given. The point of a system like this is to have a significantly more likely chance of detecting firearms discharge than just relying on people to report it. People in bad neighborhoods may have a snitches-get-stitches attitude, or may just be so jaded to gunshots that they don't bother calling anymore. Either way, this is a somewhat independent way getting information.

Works here

[christurkel]

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.

Combine this with drones...

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:"For Gunshots"...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re: "For Gunshots"...

[lgw]

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.

Re: Driving while black

[guruevi]

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, if a cop had to pull over 40% of all drivers without cause, they'd never ever write a ticket not to mention it's very hard to see race when someone is speeding past you at 60mph, from an angle in the dark.

I'm white and I've been pulled over many times, oftentimes without receiving a ticket. One time I was looking for a street and accidentally swerved just a tiny bit and instantly got the flashing lights on me. Other times I was speeding but they couldn't nail down the speed on their radar and were fishing for me to say how fast I was going. A few times it was just a broken head or taillight.

Re: Solving the wrong problem

[guruevi]

The biggest problems in the US are in Democrat run cities which is the party with the fairest, least discriminatory public policies that run solely on the platform of investing in the poor and underprivileged.

From the US to Africa though, dumping money into a bad situation doesn't help. The money doesn't get to the right people and if it does it is only used to perpetuate the problem and there are often much deeper roots between (black) privilege and engrained anti-establishment sentiments or outright distrust that cause any efforts to be nullified.

I've been in this world long enough and have lived under the policies of more than a dozen different governments (including the US-type). The only way in my opinion to end segregation of violence and perpetuation of the status quo like the problems in the US inner cities is forced education and heavy handed enforcement of justice.

If you make the punishment of crime painful and severe with a heavy social rejection factor where it makes a difference in someone's life as is common in some Asian countries, you will end a lot of crime. This does not mean victimless crimes like smoking pot should have a jail sentence enforced, the laws first of all have to be justified in order for the population to be able to respect the establishment.