ShotSpotter Led to Hundreds of Arrests in Chicago This Year. Mayor Johnson Is Still Getting Rid of It

During the first eight months of 2024, Chicago police arrested hundreds of people and recovered hundreds of guns and nearly 30,000 shell casings in part because of alerts from their ShotSpotter gun-shot detection system, which far-left mayor Brandon Johnson intends to begin phasing out in just over a week.

Police also responded significantly faster to ShotSpotter alerts than 911 calls, according to a Chicago Police Department report released this week that provides a new analysis of ShotSpotter data from January 1 through August 31.

The data analysis comes as many Chicago aldermen are looking into last-minute options to keep the life-saving technology, which Johnson has vowed to remove, in part to fulfill a campaign promise and to appease the anti-police activists who helped to elect him.

Johnson is expected to begin phasing out ShotSpotter on September 22 and to finish decommissioning the system on November 22. During a public-safety meeting this week, alderwoman Monique Scott called September 22 “doomsday” for the city.

“We’re basically going to play Russian roulette with our constituents’ lives,” she said.

During the first eight months of the year, ShotSpotter alerted police to 29,829 gunshot events in the wards where it is operating, 73 percent of which had no corresponding 911 call, the Chicago police report says.

Police made 451 arrests tied to ShotSpotter alerts, and 20 percent of the cases, or about 90, had no corresponding 911 call, the report says. Similarly, ShotSpotter alerts led to the recovery of 470 guns, and 19 percent, or about 90, were recovered without a 911 call. Police also recovered 29,214 bullet shells, of which about 5,000 were found without a call.

Police were also able to render aid to 143 shooting victims after receiving ShotSpotter alerts, but only seven of those people received aid without a corresponding 911 call, the report says. An executive with SoundThinking, the parent company of ShotSpotter, told aldermen that the company hopes to explore that statistic with police leaders because in their other markets the percentage of “victims helped without a corresponding 911 call” is much higher, according to a CBS Chicago report.

The report also found that police respond almost 2 ½ minutes faster to ShotSpotter alerts without a 911 call than when they receive a 911 call without a ShotSpotter alert — 11.9 minutes for ShotSpotter-only calls compared to 14.3 minutes for 911 calls.

ShotSpotter alerts were accurate 99.6 percent of the time, the report found.

During the public-safety meeting on Monday, former Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson said the data show the dangers of removing ShotSpotter from the city.

“Homicides will probably go up,” he said, “because those victims that we responded to quickly before, we don’t be able to get to.”

A majority of Chicago’s alderman support keeping ShotSpotter, which uses acoustic sensors to alert emergency responders to gunfire. While Johnson has expressed no interest in compromising on ending the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, alderman David Moore, one of the city’s loudest champions of the technology, has told Chicago news outlets that he has a plan to allow the police superintendent to enter into a new ShotSpotter contract.

Moore introduced the proposal earlier this year, but a Johnson ally stalled it with a parliamentary maneuver. Moore told the Chicago Sun-Times that he plans to use his own parliamentary maneuver at a council meeting next week to bring his ordinance to a vote.

Moore insisted that department heads “have a right” to make their own deals.

“It gives the ability for CPD to enter into a contract with ShotSpotter,” he said, according to the paper. “They mayor does not have to procure it.”

In May, Moore was the alderman behind an order that requires the mayor to provide the council with advance notice of any decision to stop funding violence-prevention tools — including ShotSpotter — in any ward, and to require a full council vote before the technology is defunded. The order passed overwhelmingly with a 34-14 vote.

Johnson has essentially ignored the order and continues to insist that the council does not have authority over city contracts. Moore hinted this week at a possible legal fight.

“Now, he can choose to ignore that order. But that order passed,” Moore said, according to the Sun-Times.

ShotSpotter opponents say that not only is the tool expensive and ineffective at reducing crime, it is also “racist” and “evil” because it is overly deployed in minority communities. They allege that the technology is used to spy on residents, and that it sends amped up cops with itchy trigger fingers into minority neighborhoods.

Studies have found that the technology improves dispatch and response times to shootings, and can save lives by alerting emergency responders to victims even when nobody calls 911.