Is this an effective crime fighting tool for the police or just a waste of money? I am wondering if it might be wise to put more officers on the streets rather than invest in this technology. Thoughts?

Here is the link to the story


http://www.nola.com/crime/inde...ncart_river_home_pop

ONLY if the agency has proper staffing.

If an agency has enough cops to get to a shotspotter location in seconds, they absolutely will have good results. I seized several guns personally from arriving within 30 seconds of the notification. Arrests, as well. I found several shot people, too.

One of my responsibilities at my old agency before I left was 100% research and review of all shotspotter activations, to present the data during a weekly Intel meetings. It worked, very well. Very, very well.

However, if the agency does not have enough staffing, like my current one, it simply doesn't do anything but show you where to look for shell casings. We terminated our contract.

But at my old agency, man it was awesome!

Doesn't prevent jack. It merely alerts that something similar to a gunshot was registered, and gives a good idea of where.

"Where" is pretty predictable. "When" is actually pretty predictable, too, when it comes right down to it.

The idea that these systems "give a head start" to responders is wishful thinking. Not that precise, and no witness/reporting party to "stream" valuable information to the guys on patrol. As Chongo points out: if you have the manpower to blanket a problem area that quickly, it's good. Otherwise?

But it DOES give the appearance of "doing something" and sure makes the vendor happy.

quote:

Originally posted by DennisM:
Doesn't prevent jack. It merely alerts that something similar to a gunshot was registered, and gives a good idea of where.

"Where" is pretty predictable. "When" is actually pretty predictable, too, when it comes right down to it.

The idea that these systems "give a head start" to responders is wishful thinking. Not that precise, and no witness/reporting party to "stream" valuable information to the guys on patrol.

But it DOES give the appearance of "doing something" and sure makes the vendor happy.

In my experience, "a good idea" was within 10 feet, often dead on.

30 seconds from the time of the actual shots. It also let us replay it, to judge for ourselves if it was a car backfiring, a transformer blowing, or two different caliber guns shooting back and forth.

Occasionally a location would be off due to building echos.

Like I said, with proper staffing it gets officers on scene, quick. The area I was in where it worked so well was about 4 Sq miles, with 20-30 officers working. A shotspotter notification got the closest 4 officers immediately, popping up with the exact location on their in car computers. Often the officers were already within 3 or 4 blocks. THAT is how you win with Shotspotter.

I miss those good times...but I sure as hell don't miss having deputy chiefs calling me on a Sunday night wanting to know who I thought was shooting at who on the shotspotter activation that just went off. Usually I already had a good idea, with snitches blowing my phone up, but I didn't know how stressed I actually was until a year after I'd left.

Fresno has it in one part of the city. It helped to capture a turd that shot 3 innocents back in April. The police chief seems pretty high on it and is looking to expand it.

Wow. I was in Aberdeen in '06? and saw them testing an "anti-sniper" system that listened for the shot. They were driving a HUMVEE around with a sensor on it that heard shots (and could supposedly distinguish between different rounds, AK or M16 for instance).

We went cold when they tested it; they would shoot an AK and an M16 from different positions while the vehicle drove down a crossing lane. After each shot the weapon (oh yea, it had an M240 on a remote weapon mount with a camera that fed to the operator inside) would traverse towards the sound. It was suppose to put the gunner in the correct area and he fine tuned it before firing.

So it looks like we have the acoustic angle down pat, when do you guys get the remote weapon station?

I honestly wasn't too interested, except when they said they had a couple of thousand rounds to use up through the AK (1978 Russian) and we were free to help

The microphones were good, too. I listened to thousands, heard several shouts and screams. Two were confirmed to be the actual victims after being hit.

I had to shoot a pit bull charging a terminex man once. It was cool afterwards to play the shotspotter notification and hear my 6 shots, under 4 seconds. Was shooting off hand from the draw and hit the bugger on the run 2 of 6 shots!

Okay lol...I'm done now.

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
ONLY if the agency has proper staffing.

If an agency has enough cops to get to a shotspotter location in seconds, they absolutely will have good results. I seized several guns personally from arriving within 30 seconds of the notification. Arrests, as well. I found several shot people, too.

One of my responsibilities at my old agency before I left was 100% research and review of all shotspotter activations, to present the data during a weekly Intel meetings. It worked, very well. Very, very well.

However, if the agency does not have enough staffing, like my current one, it simply doesn't do anything but show you where to look for shell casings. We terminated our contract.

But at my old agency, man it was awesome!

But, find me an urban dept that DOES have enough people.

If you find one that has enough officers "on paper" then look at the statistics and see if they are heavy on special units, and actually have enough units "on patrol" as opposed to admin gigs, detective gigs, or othewise.

If any of our local depts got staffed where they SHOULD be on the street, it COULD be a good tool.

I've yet to see that, even here, where we are trying... but aren't there yet.

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:

I had to shoot a pit bull charging a terminex man once. It was cool afterwards to play the shotspotter notification and hear my 6 shots, under 4 seconds. Was shooting off hand from the draw and hit the bugger on the run 2 of 6 shots!

Okay - now we want more info: caliber, load, gun used, terminal effect on the Pit, etc...

Interesting thread on this technology.

-------------------------------------

Waste of money.

DC installed one years ago.

If found the majority of gun shots came from areas with high crime rates.

Convictions stemming from this system = 0.

Chongo, thanks for the insight. I'm really curious about this because they are about to activate this system in a section of Jacksonville.

I think that JSO would definitely fall into the "not properly staffed" category. They are putting it in a relatively small area, I assumed it was small as a pilot program for evaluating the system but maybe it is a small area so they can cover it with enough officers.

quote:

If you find one that has enough officers "on paper

Years ago we had one on paper that we called "the hall monitor". couldn't figure out what he did except standing the hallway by dispatch and meet people as they can into the building. Never did anything after that. Some held positions that shou8ld have been done by civilians but they had to do something with them so they created a job.

The job was really inefficient years back before computers allowed reports to be filed from the street. We had guys who could milk a ten minute report intgo a hour plus job. Yet the department wanted no part of streamlining the job. A piece of paper must be generated for every fart. Documenting it was important to track the jobs and time. Most could be done right into the CAD system but the old guard needed a piece of paper to hold.

I believe they help cut the response time down. They go directly to the dispatch center. If you 911 to report the shots they ask about 50 questions which delays the police dispatch.

 
They have been using them in the Valley (PHX area) for a dozen years now, mostly over the July 4th period and around New Years. They do dedicate enough officers to provide a quick response time, and have made some inroads. Response is very quick.
 

ShotSpotter has value as part of a larger program. The value isn't just in rapid response to shots fired, or to shots fired that witnesses refuse to call in.

It also provides more accurate information about where the shots occurred. Due to weird issues with acoustics witness are often wrong about where the shots were fired.

Meaning ShotSpotter gives a greater chance of recovering evidence, ie shell casings.

Recovered casings can be entered into the NIBIN/IBIS database. Which can link a series of shootings. By linking shootings, there is often a better chance of identifying suspects, and building a case against those suspects.

When combined with other investigative tools (NIBIN/IBIS, tracing, and more traditional tools) those recovered shell casings, that might never have been found without ShotSpotter, can become valuable in building those cases against violent criminals.