ShotSpotter is a service that installs microphones around town and "spots" gunshots, but is frequently criticized for its reliability and price. One study found it offers "no reductions in serious violent crimes, yet … increases demands on police resources". The problems with it are both systematic (the mics confirm the biases that went into the their placements; the accuracy is low) and specific (the company 'admitted they manually alter the computer-calculated evidence "on a semiregular basis"'). People fed up with money being wasted on this silly cop toy have launched a campaign to convice cities to ditch it if they have it and pass on it if they don't.
ShotSpotter, Inc. is a private company that sells noise-detection technology (with no known significant impact on violent crime) to police departments across the country. Research in cities to date shows:
· ShotSpotter does not have a significant impact on gun violence
· ShotSpotter rarely finds actionable evidence of a gun crime
· ShotSpotter increases high-stress interactions between police and innocent civilians
· ShotSpotter wastes millions of taxpayer dollars
For an idea of how tawdry ShotSpotter is, just a few days ago some of its executives got into a twitter fight with a critic, T. Greg Doucette (previously), who apparently realized that one of the anonymous weirdos trolling him, "Slayer Capital", was one of ShotSpotter's higher-ups. The thread where he exposes the man (who promptly shut down his account) is jawdropping. These guys are the smallest beer you ever saw, yet they've landed upon the most incredible swizz with their "gunshots? maybe?" service.
