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City Hall pushed to buy $1.5m system to track gunshots
By Suzanne Smalley, Globe Staff | January 6, 2007

Boston city councilors, law enforcement officials, and community leaders are pressing City Hall to come up with $1.5 million to buy a promising acoustic gunshot-detection system.

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Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts The sensor system could blanket a 5.6-square-mile swath of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods -- the source of 80 to 85 percent of calls citywide reporting shots fired -- and give officers a jump on arresting suspects, improve police response time to 911 calls, and possibly reduce firearm violence, proponents say.

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said he believes the technology would help prosecutors win more gun cases and would require a "relatively modest investment," given the city's $2 billion annual budget.

"Police would be able to get the scene quickly and perhaps apprehend someone fleeing the scene, or identify someone who actually saw something," Conley said in an interview yesterday. "It would also corroborate witness testimony."

City Councilor Robert Consalvo , who first proposed that Boston look into the ShotSpotter technology last February, said Mayor Thomas M. Menino's budget director, Lisa Signori, is trying to find $1.5 million in the current or next fiscal year's budget to install the system and maintain it for four years.

GLOBE GRAPHIC: Listening for safety

Dorothy Joyce, a spokeswoman for Menino, said the mayor is "interested in any type of technology that can let police officers do their jobs safely and more effectively." Joyce said Menino asked Signori to review whether the city could afford the system, and has asked new Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis for his advice.

The City Council's new president, Maureen E. Feeney, said she supports buying the system, and said Davis and Menino told her they are interested as well. "It's just now trying to figure out how we get to the point of purchasing this," she said.

Davis said he plans to make his recommendation to Menino within a month, after department officials study how the system is working in Chicago. "Any time we can use technology to reduce response times, or get us more focused on where crime is occurring, I think it's a tremendous benefit," the commissioner said in an interview yesterday.

Still, Davis said, he wants to carefully study whether the system is the best way to use the city's limited public safety resources. "Ultimately, you have to look at whether you're going to reduce shootings better with a police officer there or a piece of technology," he said.

Consalvo arranged for police commanders to test the system in August at the department firing range on Moon Island . Commanders decided the technology could be of great help by telling officers the exact location of a shooting within a few seconds, said Police Superintendent Robert Dunford, who supervises the department's patrol officers.Continued...

It would probably detect a few shots....

Then, after those misses, the third or fourth shot would hit it dead center.

lrb111 wrote:It would probably detect a few shots....

Then, after those misses, the third or fourth shot would hit it dead center.

Haha!

The military is supposedly using/will be using something like this to combat snipers.

Love to be there on the 4th of July.

Waste of time and money IMO.

MrDrummy wrote:

lrb111 wrote:It would probably detect a few shots....

Then, after those misses, the third or fourth shot would hit it dead center.

Haha!

The military is supposedly using/will be using something like this to combat snipers.

Yep, and from what I'm told it works well. But the sensors are also not behind enemy lines. or are guarded. In an urban setting surrounded by shooters, all bets are off.

Seems that several officers could be hired to patrol the neighborhood. I think a constant presence would improve response time and cost a lot less than 1.5 million.
Jason

London is already heavily monitored by police cameras. Now they've started adding directional microphones and noise-canceling software, along with computerized monitoring that picks up "hot words" and sounds of disturbance.

Depending on the situation, a technician might merely use the attached loudspeaker to notify the subjects that they're being monitored, or might dispatch officers to respond.

Orwell missed by a couple of decades.

KBCraig wrote: Orwell missed by a couple of decades.

Yikes. That's what I was thinking.

I saw something about this on the news this morning, and quite honestly, it didn't sound like such a bad idea.
I can't think of any situation where gunshots being fired in Boston that the police shouldn't respond. Perhaps an accidental discharge might get more attention than it deserves. An AD in city limits is still againt the law.

The system is supposed to discriminate gunshots, from fireworks backfires and thermonuclear explosions.

I don't see where the sensors would be any more prone to vandalism than streetlights or TXDOT type cameras.

As I understand it, the system doesn't supply convictable evidence it just alerts the police that they might want to check out a certain area.

I would rather have cities spending money on something like this that might help catch real badguys, than the darned Red lite cameras.