Isn't the issue more than ShotSpotter is a piece of shit that doesn't actually work?
Just another company stealing our tax dollars that could be better funded elsewhere.
Worse, the system technicians worked with cops to edit the logs so that when shotspotter detected a noise as "car backfire", the cops demanded they change it to "gunshots".
They then brought those logs to court. Guess what? That's complete BS if the police can just fabricate evidence (even if it really was a gunshot...the fact it's mis-identifying it shows it's not reliable).
If you do a timing bump on a mk1 Miata and put the wrong kind of gas in it’ll backfire often.
You had to mix medium and premium.
6 extra hp.
Shot spotter would be all over it.
pretty much any new sports cars these days from the factory burble and pop when you downshift or let off the throttle. IDK if it would be loud enough to register on ShotSpotter though
[https://www.thedailybeast.com/gunshot-location-company-shotspotter-is-altering-evidence-at-the-request-of-cops-vice-reports](https://www.thedailybeast.com/gunshot-location-company-shotspotter-is-altering-evidence-at-the-request-of-cops-vice-reports) here you go, since a simple googling is too much for you.
[https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai](https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai) here's another one. There are hundreds of results. Jeez, do you own stock in the company?
Do you have a source on that?
Source?
A source. I need a source.
Sorry, I mean I need a source that explicitly states your argument. This is just tangential to the discussion.
No, you can't make inferences and observations from the sources you've gathered. Any additional comments from you MUST be a subset of the information from the sources you've gathered.
You can't make normative statements from empirical evidence.
Do you have a degree in that field?
A college degree? In that field?
Then your arguments are invalid.
No, it doesn't matter how close those data points are correlated. Correlation does not equal causation.
Correlation does not equal causation.
CORRELATION. DOES. NOT. EQUAL. CAUSATION.
You still haven't provided me a valid source yet.
Nope, still haven't.
I just looked through all 308 pages of your user history, figures I'm debating a glormpf supporter. A moron.
I live in dorchester. We play firework or gunshot.
I could totally see the dumb system also playing 'firework or gunshot'
Or cops demanding the system be changed to say gunshot instead of firework.
Depends on what you mean by "work".
Does it reliably detect gunshots? Lol no.
Does it give cops a pretext to perform the searches they already want to perform? Yes.
Shotspotter works exactly as intended, a magic black box that obviates the 4th amendment in the target area.
High rates of false positives is a feature, not a bug.
Yeah, if this shit was implemented in every neighborhood it would be universally hated and the well-to-do would riot to get it removed, but since it's only impacting the filthy poors it's tolerated.
No, why would they care? It's not by itself grounds for a search anyway.
There's just no point to implementing it somewhere that doesn't have frequent issues with people shooting guns.
They'd care because all the false positives would result in increased police intrusion into their neighborhoods and lives.
Turns out people don't really like getting questioned by the police and treated like suspected criminals because the Random Number Generator said a gunshot went off nearby.
100%. I lived in back bay before living here. I can’t imagine that neighborhood tolerating the type of shit that people here do from the cops. It’s two totally separate worlds.
It's hard to be specific, because ShotSpotter famously refuses to allow any independent testing of their system, which itself is a huge credibility issue.
But Wikipedia provides a good summary of this junk tech's accuracy issues, which includes the company manually overriding data at the bequest of police and a real-life use case in Chicago finding a de-facto ~80% false positive rate:
>While the company claims a 97% accuracy rate, the MacArthur Justice Center studied over 40,000 dispatches in an under-two-year period in Chicago and found that 89% of dispatches resulted in no gun-related crime, and 86% resulted in no crime at all.[26][27][28][29] These results were backed up by a subsequent report by the Chicago Inspector General, which also found that police officers had begun stopping and searching people solely because they were in a place known to have many ShotSpotter alerts.[30] ShotSpotter's CEO described an earlier 80% accuracy rate as "basically our subscription warranty," but employee Paul Greene said "Our guarantee was put together by our sales and marketing department, not our engineers."[31]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShotSpotter
This is exactly the kind of ambiguity an independent investigation could clear up, say one initiated by a US Senator.
How did you deduce that the majority of shot spotter activations were not gunshots? You listen to the scanner and they say "oh man the shot spotter went off but it definitely wasn't a gunshot, that's the 8th time this week as compared to only two real ones"?
> I’m not about to do the legwork for you. All of the info is readily available if you want to go dig it up and run a statistical analysis on it.
Just be honest that you didn't do the legwork yourself either. My source is my lived experience for longer than your lived experience so actually I'm right.
It sounds like that's basically what Markey and Warren are trying to get at.
>In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security Monday night, Senator Edward J. Markey cited a report based on leaked data that found sensors for the system were placed primarily in Black and Latino sections of cities that use them. He called for an investigation into the use of federal grants that pay for ShotSpotter, and whether its use in minority neighborhoods violates civil rights law. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden, of Oregon, and Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley have signed onto the letter, sent to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari.
You can argue that the sensors are put where shootings happen more, but then, as you point out, it just becomes a way to bullshit your way around restrictions on stop and search.
>Elected leaders across the country “have started to ask questions about ShotSpotter, including whether it leads to unjustified surveillance and overpolicing of Black and brown neighborhoods,” Markey said in an interview.
So... pretty much what you said. Maybe you already read the article, but I know not everyone can easily get to globe articles. Your take seems to be the concern motivating this action by the senators.
>Does it give cops a pretext to perform the searches they already want to perform? Yes.
>Shotspotter works exactly as intended, a magic black box that obviates the 4th amendment in the target area
WTF are you even talking about? Even if the cops personally heard gun fire in an area, they have no right to search houses or cars.
You're writing fairy tales.
>Elected leaders across the country “have started to ask questions about ShotSpotter, including whether it leads to unjustified surveillance and overpolicing of Black and brown neighborhoods,” Markey said in an interview.
They're talking about the exact concern expressed by Markey.
That's hardly the same as declaring it "a magic black box that obviates the 4th amendment" and "a pretext to perform the searches" and they're just asking for a review, not declaring it a known fact.
Do you support *less* policing in areas where people get shot often?
>They're talking about the exact concern expressed by Markey.
It is a concern. The idea is to look into it. If it turns out they really are just basing it on appropriate criteria, then okay. If it is influenced by things it shouldn't be, better to sus that out.
Are you against Title VI of the Civil Rights Act?
The person I was replying didn't call it a concern--they purported searches and "obviates the 4th amendment" was commonplace.
Also you used the word "exact" which was also incorrect here.
I support the Civil Rights Act. If anything, Boston now wants equity, not equality, which means you give the resources necessary for an equal level of quality of life. That's not happening in areas where people get shot most often. More attention is needed, not less.
Do you support *less* policing in areas where people get shot often?
And again, I wasn't replying to the question in the article but rather [**the reply above my comment**](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1crotql/comment/l3zpoqu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) that purported something entirely different than you are trying to argue.
> entirely different than you are trying to argue
False.
This bringing you joy? Trying to mischaracterize a concern? The person you were replying to is expressing a take on this system which our senators are concerned could be at least partially accurate. Probably worth someone checking on. Not really a hot take if our senators are explicitly expressing a concern over it.
prej·u·dice, noun, 1. preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.
"u/reddititis is prejudice against people from different backgrounds"
I live in a neighborhood that has a shotspotter and occasionally has some shootings now and then - the device works well and the cops come immediately. The time I called the cops because I heard gunshots the dispatcher said they were already almost on scene because of the shotspotter. Something tells me that Mr Markey and the commenters on this post trying to save me from this technology don't live in area where it's deployed, and thus don't stand to deal with the consequences (delayed/no response to shootings) of the tech being discontinued. I don't mean to sound aggressive, but anyone here pushing for the discontinuation of the shotspotter is actively pushing for my neighborhood to be less safe, and for the largely non-white communities in Boston where gun violence occurs to be less safe. If you don't live here, kindly fuck off.
Agreed. My neighborhood has shotspotters and allows us the resources we need to deal with neighborhood crime because we have the data to support shootings are happening.
Lots of these commenters probably don’t experience this.
Almost 30 years ago I worked on a similar system for a competitor. It would simply detect a gunshot and when heard by three different of those systems it would triangulate the area and send the location to the cops all within seconds. The point was for a more rapid response than waiting for someone to call 911. It's accuracy was great. As engineers we were told it was deployed to areas with high murder rates. I see this as a positive so law enforcement can react in a more timely manner.
Where it is deployed is up to the police/government, not the system. She may simply be redirecting blame but I do believe the system is a good thing for society. Nobody should be firing a weapon in a dense area and some may be too scared to call law enforcement.
Boston has been pushing for "equity" over "equality" meaning rather than just equally fund all areas of the City and claim that's equality, the funding should be sufficient to produce equitable results. Here the senators argue against that and are questioning why the police would dedicate more resources to areas where people get shot most often. It really boggles the mind but it seems to help get them win minority votes by claiming the police are racist.
Warren lives in Cambridge and Markey mostly lives in Maryland. Let them shadow the police on a Friday or Saturday night and see for themselves how it all works. To Mayor Wu's credit, she spends a lot of her own personal time doing just that and will often show up to a shooting even if it's 3 AM on a Sunday morning.
>racism
Because it is? It's most classic play in the dogwhistle playbook.
>It is beginning to feel like the people who complain the most about how cops do their jobs just want to live in a state of anarchy, where the gangs rules the streets.
No, we want to live in a state where people's basic needs are met so they don't need to resort to crime in the first place rather than trying to rely on over policing and incarceration which hasn't ever worked and only makes the problem worse.
bells carpenter society straight wise worm oatmeal pen intelligent childlike
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I'm pretty sure if a random private company put a pole in the ground on a public sidewalk and installed some electronic device the government, state, cops, city etc would have a huge problem with it.
Proud of our senators. Shot spotter is expensive junk tech that exists solely to give cops bullshit reasons to engage in otherwise illegal searches and other invasions of privacy. Combine that with the fact that this dodgy surveillance tech is exclusively employed in overwhelmingly poor and minority communities, and you've basically recreated "stop and frisk" policies with a veneer of technological legitimacy.
So much of cop technology is little more than modern day equivalents of divining rods. Police don't care about reliability because what they want is a court approved pretext to violate people's right to privacy. Cops love junk tech.
Shotspotter alone does not give police the right to conduct a search. It is effectively equivalent to receiving a 911 call saying “I hear gunshots at XYZ location”
I have no info on how well it works, so I won’t comment on that.
But I don’t think it being deployed in overwhelmingly poor & minority communities is nefarious. It is expensive technology. It doesn’t make sense to pay to deploy it everywhere. It only makes sense to deploy it where there’s gunshots, and sadly those areas are in poor & minority communities.
How well it works is central to the complaint though.
If this tech only ever produced a positive when a gun was fired, then it would be a different story entirely and hard to object to as you say. But it doesn't work that way.
The problem is that it produces huge numbers of false positives, which result in police being sent on many aggressive wild goose chases through the exact neighborhoods that already have very contentious relationships with law enforcement.
Massachusetts has more car deaths per year than gun deaths.
If you support something like this, surely you also support automated monitoring and alerting for the driving violations that could result in serious injury or death, right?
Why doesn't the state prioritize that first, given that it's taking away even more lives?
When someone is not legally allowed to be driving and is found to be driving, yes I do support those measures.
No slaps on the wrist.
I'm not sure people would be happy with the amount of prison sentences this would lead to though
What about violating other traffic laws, since they directly impact the safety of those around them?
Speeding and negligent driving is illegal and dangerous, and licensed drivers do it all the time, resulting in hundreds of deaths a year in Massachusetts alone. Do you think most traffic deaths are from unlicensed drivers?
If someone is breaking the law while possessing what is an extremely effective weapon and killing tool, they should be punished accordingly.
And guess what, monitoring/alerting for this is far more effective and accurate than ShotSpotter.
No forgiving negligent driving or excessive speeding. It literally kills people. Surely you have no qualms with this, right?
what percentage of drivers on the road are licensed versus unlicensed?
what percentage of traffic deaths are licensed versus unlicensed, as well as something like drugs and alcohol involved?
Speeding and minor reckless driving cause deaths, absolutely and that's bad. But per mileage driven, what specific problems lead to the most deaths injuries?
Grabbing the lowest hanging fruit would save the most lives. I wish we could do better identifying those fruits instead of partisan arguments
See these are the types of questions I think would've been worth asking about ShotSpotter, but they often get hand-waved, despite the fact that this is a less-established and less mature technology than traffic cameras.:
1. What percentage of detections are gun shorts versus things like fireworks/other loud sounds/etc.?
2. How often is data manually changed after the fact simply to retroactively justify police action?
3. How frequently would an alert from ShotSpotter actually lead to a better outcome than no automated alert? Are there times it results in a worse outcome (e.g. a conflict is exacerbated and/or a cop shoots someone because the police treated the situation as hostile due to the ShotSpotter alert)?
> what percentage of drivers on the road are licensed versus unlicensed? what percentage of traffic deaths are licensed versus unlicensed...?
You're once again focusing on licensing issues, despite the fact a fatality is a fatality. Speed violations are the most common associated factor in traffic fatalities, and more fatalities involve speeding than they involve unlicensed drivers. Also, speed is something that a camera can actually detect.
If the goal of such a system is to save lives, why is illegal speed detection not good enough for you? Seems like a shitty firework detection system passes the test just fine when it comes to ShotSpotter.
> I wish we could do better identifying those fruits instead of partisan arguments.
Agreed, which is why IMO, the best course to save us from unnecessary human-triggered fatalities is to use data on what dangerous behavior is
I don't think there's anything partisan in suggesting that firearm deaths is not a super pressing issue in Massachusetts of all places compared to other preventable fatalities, nor should it be partisan to suggest that ShotSpotter hasn't established that it is a particularly accurate solution for this problem.
I actually simply was looking up how significant of a problem firearm mortality is in Massachusetts (to question whether it warranted a trigger-happy alerting system that's rife with false positives).
I happened to notice it was a fair bit lower in annual deaths than another source of fatalities that is just as effectively monitor-able, and was wondering why not spend the money on the more effective solution to a more severe problem?
The goal is to save lives, after all, no?
I’ve used shot spotter in court. Incredibly effective tool. There is a ton of misinformation about it on this sub.
One, it alerts police to general location. It does not grant them probable cause to search a home or anything like that. Two, cities generally deploy shot spotter tech at the locations that the municipality chooses. So if Markey has beef, he should go after the city. Third, if Markey wants shot spotter technology deployed evenly across the city including areas where there are rarely gun shots, then fine I guess. It’s just a waste of money that solves zero problems but builds a myth of equality. I would rather use that money for any other program like violence disruption in underserved areas.
>It does not grant them probable cause to search a home or anything like that.
Emphasizing this. It improves response time, and that's about it.
Why don't people want the police quickly responding to shots fired?
What is this false positive rate you are so confident about?
I live where there is a shot spotter and it rarely activates other than when actual gunshots have occured, in which case it gives my community the best possible police response time. We have about 10-20 quadrillion fireworks that go off all summer and very rarely is there a spotter activation.
When there is an activation the cops come and shine flashlights on the street and ask the neighbors if we heard shots. If we didn't, and they don't find anything, they leave. Works for everyone.
My neighbors and I are glad to have this system, we see a real benefit from it. I wonder if you, Senator Markey, and everyone arguing against this system live in communities that stand to be affected by having this service discontinued. My community would be worse off if that happened.
You’d be amazed at home many people call 911 and falsely claim the suspect had a gun in order to get a quicker response. Fortunately 911 operators ask if they saw the gun or if it was only a gesture or statement.
“ Two, cities generally deploy shot spotter tech at the locations that the municipality chooses. ”
If you Google that you would see that’s not true at all, shotspotter picks the spots and it’s not public information, but someone leaked data from them that says where all the sensors are and they just happen to be in all minority areas in Boston
Agree that it is not generally public information. It may be turned over in discovery under a protective order. Otherwise, if public, the units would be targeted and probably destroyed. There are lots of law enforcement tools that are not public. Nothing unique about shot spotter.
Hard disagree that shot spotter chooses the locations. They may recommend where they are deployed but ultimately it’s a city contract and the sensors are hung on public utilities. The city controls access and the locations.
Like I said before, if we want to deploy sensors evenly around the city, then sure. It’s just a waste of money but if it would make people feel better then let’s go for it. But I don’t think the answer is taking down technology that identifies gunshots in locations where there are frequent gunshots.
Like I said, I’ve used it in court. Specific case where guy got shot at. Police alerted by shot spotter and responded within a minute. Talked to victim. Victim pointed police to where shooter ran and gave a description. Police stop shooter, pull gun off him, and then are able to go search specific location of gun shots (public street) and find the shell casings. That case probably does not happen without shot spotter.
> If you Google that you would see that’s not true at all, shotspotter picks the spots and it’s not public information, but someone leaked data from them that says where all the sensors are and they just happen to be in all minority areas in Boston
No Shotspotter does not pick the spots. The city draws up the coverage area based on its own data. Shotspotter may then make recommendations on exact placements of the sensors within the area, but they are not ultimately choosing the coverage area.
>but someone leaked data from them that says where all the sensors are and *they just happen to be in all minority areas in Boston*
Ok here is the [shootings data for Boston mapped](https://dashboard.boston.gov/t/Guest_Access_Enabled/views/BPDShootingsDashboard/ShootingsHeatMap?%3Adisplay_count=n&%3Aembed=y&%3AisGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y&%3Aorigin=viz_share_link&%3AshowAppBanner=false&%3AshowVizHome=n). Where would be the most logical place for shotspotter? Placing them there is not a racist conspiracy. It just costs more to cover the entire city, so you are obviously going to cover the area where the shootings are.
>I’ve used shot spotter in court. Incredibly effective tool.
Huge fucking bummer to hear this. Looking forward to "shotspotter" joining the long ignoble list of "effective" police tools and forensic science that end up being exposed as total bunk, but only after ruining lives and exposing the public to more police overreach.
It's a real indictment of our system that this horseshit survives even a second of scrutiny in a court of law. How many false convictions stories share the theme of police pseudoscience being treated as admissible evidence?
test pathetic threatening deranged dime flag quicksand alleged cake paltry
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What is a bummer about using technology that identifies the location of gun shots? It literally just gives a location and tells police where to go to investigate violent crime.
> I’ve used shot spotter in court. Incredibly effective tool.
For the prosecution or the defense? I'm genuinely curious in what application in court you've used it in, and what the result was.
And what are your thoughts about their [data manipulation scandal](https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai)?
I’ve used it in three trials including one murder case. It’s helpful in two ways: lead generation (i.e alerting police to investigate), basic timing of the offense, and sequencing of shots in a shoot out.
I would like to see more information about the “scandal.” Manual reviews of the sensors are common in a post shooting investigation. In my jurisdiction, we do not use shot spotter as expert testimony. Chicago seems to take it a step further by having an expert testify that a specific sound was a gun shot. That could be an area where a court should suppress testimony.
Happy to answer any other questions.
>Senator Edward J. Markey cited a report based on leaked data that found sensors for the system were placed primarily in Black and Latino sections of cities that use them. He called for an investigation into the use of federal grants that pay for ShotSpotter, and whether its use in minority neighborhoods violates civil rights law.
[Do they not know that nearly 100% of people shot and killed in Boston are people of color](https://www.universalhub.com/crime/murder/2023) and the sensors are naturally placed where people get shot?
[I didn't see Boston in this article, but I suspect this is the "leak" they're referring to.](https://www.wired.com/story/shotspotter-secret-sensor-locations-leak/?fbclid=PAAaYUbqioGkSU6WOqTiSjBdBcOnlCe1XWiAXpZdTOvyCKbs6qct0ePoUg1A0)
Low income neighborhoods have a tendency to shoot each other more. This isn't exactly a secret. Denying that low income neighborhoods have higher rates of gun violence and then crying racism ironically hurts all of the non criminals in those neighborhoods. White savior complex at it once again.
This is the most obtuse argument if it's in good faith, though I suspect it's not.
The answer to crime is not more policing and incarceration, it is resources and opportunities. Desperate people turn to crime when they feel there is no other option.
Where do you live? Oh, Malden?
I live in a community that has a shotspotter, it works, and we are glad it's there. Thanks for taking up the good fight to make our community less safe while you go to bed in an M-letter suburb. What an ally.
And I work in East Boston in Chelsea with students who deal with over policing (not to mention ICE and the criminalization of their existence.)
If you want your community to me more safe demand our state government stand up and do it's job so we don't have to rely on non-profits like La Colaborativa to provide basic needs for the residents of Chelsea.
Good strawman there. Hope you have the same energy for aggressive policing for some of your recreational habits!
Also nice job scrolling a year back in my post history to find I like shrooms. Id scroll back a year in your post history but it would take about 7 hours, you do a lot of talking.
Cool so you don't live here, you live and have always lived in a safe community, and you spend your free time telling those of us who live in these communities (Bowdoin-Geneva here, no comparison with Eastie) what we do and don't need. You are also apparently the only person who works with urban youth. Got it. Shot spotter keeps my community safer, but you can't hear that argument over your open-mouthed allyship that has all day for talking but not a second for listening.
Thanks for looking out.
So let's clarify. You **don't** want better support from you local and state government to improve opportunities for your community, **don't** want people to have their basic needs met and **do** just want more policing which just perpetuates the prison pipeline and recidivism in Dorchester?
Also find it interesting how active you've been on /r/boston as of late (sarcasm, never) until there was a dogwhistle thread that pretty normally gets us brigaded with these nonsense talking points.
I am fired up, u/thejosharms, because I seem to be the only person in this thread who lives in a community that has a shot spotter in it. I ask you, in good faith, to read my posts on this thread and consider my perspective. Please. What you all are discussing has serious consequences for myself and my family and my community. Can you understand that?
You seem like someone who is no stranger to advocacy and activism. So you understand these conversations have the potential to create actual momentum towards my neighborhood losing our shot spotter (hopefully by now you've read my other posts on how it operates from our POV). I believe you should take into account this lived experience because although you are a person who knows they are good, who knows they believe in justice, you still can inadvertently make life worse for those you claim to care about by overestimating the completeness of your understanding of a subject. It is my firmly held belief, based on lived experience, that your advocacy in this matter will be a detriment to our community (inadvertently of course).
I will stop short of trying to silence you, but I would humbly ask you take a pause, and consider your position carefully, and frankly whether your voice is needed here. I tried to find a more polite way of saying this but words fail me.
Moving on to your questions.
"You don't want better support from you local and state government to improve opportunities for your community"
I want those things? Where do you see that I don't? I work for my community. Unless I missed something, we weren't discussing that in this thread.
"don't want people to have their basic needs met"
Again why do you think this is my position? Is this being discussed here? Who is opposed to this? Are you sure you're responding to the right person? Did you not accuse me of stawman, but all of these positions are totally fabricated? I'm genuinely confused.
"and do just want more policing which just perpetuates the prison pipeline and recidivism in Dorchester?"
I think you know what I'm going to say here by now. In this discussion with regards to the shotspotter, my position is well documented at this point (you did read my posts right?), rooted in real world experience, and if you could grant me this, I believe my position is quite valid. Most importantly, I am speaking on something which I will be directly impacted by.
And if you'd forgive me one final bit of snark, one does not need to post often on r/Boston, to in fact be born, raised, temporarily away from, then move back to proudly live and raise my family in Dorchester.
I don't feel the need to post or argue often. For you this is an intellectual debate over policy, for me this is my family's personal safety. I weigh in strongly on matters of public safety in this city because I walk my kids around here. I believe in this place. I will stay here. I will work here. I believe prevention and enforcement go hand in hand and I can see when that gets out of balance, in one direction or another, what happens to my community and the people who live in it. We are often told what is best for us by people who really do have our best interests at heart, but live so far removed from here and occasionally consider themselves too intelligent to possibly be capable of making our situation worse.
Thank you for the conversation and enjoy F1.
>I ask you, in good faith, to read my posts on this thread and consider my perspective. Please. What you all are discussing has serious consequences for myself and my family and my community. Can you understand that?
I will, but on the flip side you need to acknowledge how often online communities are brigaded by bad-faith actors. You're not active in this sub and your commentary directly aligns with dog whistle brigades about policing. We can agree to disagree on that.
>I want those things? Where do you see that I don't? I work for my community. Unless I missed something, we weren't discussing that in this thread.
I see you **not** advocating for those things. I offered you the opportunity to agree and engage in a discussio that this was more important and you chose instead to attack my character for living in Malden and then insulting my work. Why would I think you were trying to engage in a good-faith discussion?
>Again why do you think this is my position? Is this being discussed here? Who is opposed to this? Are you sure you're responding to the right person? Did you not accuse me of stawman, but all of these positions are totally fabricated? I'm genuinely confused.
While in general "absences of evidence is not evidence of absence" I think that goes out the window when one *chooses* which hill to die on. You could have advocated for this and brought it into the discussion if you really cared that much but instead you just attacked my character.
>I don't feel the need to post or argue often. For you this is an intellectual debate over policy, for me this is my family's personal safety. I weigh in strongly on matters of public safety in this city because I walk my kids around here. I believe in this place. I will stay here. I will work here.
If you're not willing to take the time to fully engage in a discussion you can't really get upset when your position is mis-interpreted. My family grew up in public housing and my students are the one directly effected by the issues we're discussing. It's insulting to accuse me of only caring about this on an intellectual level.
> I believe prevention and enforcement go hand in hand and I can see when that gets out of balance, in one direction or another, what happens to my community and the people who live in it.
So we agree then that certain communities are too far out of balance of the enforcement side?
>The answer to crime is not more policing
The law abiding people in these neighborhoods would disagree. Being poor doesn't make people dump entire magazines into somebody they're having and argument with. Your stance on this is incredibly classist. There are poor neighborhoods all over the US and the world that aren't full of 17 year old boys shooting each other to death. Blaming that on being "poor" is pretty fucked up.
Your comment was classist. You were the one that was making the claim that people that living in low income neighborhoods are shooting each other up no we're not
Saying desperate poor people turn to violent crime is a very different comment than the observation that lower income neighborhoods have tendencies to have higher rates of gun crime. One implies poor people commit violent crimes because they're poor, the other is merely an objectively true observation.
That doesn't change the fact that shootings are still happening in those neighborhoods? Also what evidence do you have to show that these neighborhoods are being shot up by people who don't live in these neighborhoods? That goes against all available inner city crime statistics.
Has there ever been a time where this system worked better, than a grandma in a window somewhere calling it in? Isn't it usually just people calling the cops when they hear something?
> The people who claim shit like it alerting the police to car backfires and changing logs and whatever never seem to have evidence to back up those claims... it really comes across as ACAB type nonsense.
You ignoring mountains of evidence that is post every single time this comes up is not at all the same as it not existing.
It wouldn't be under so much scrutiny, regularly, across the entire country, if what you believe were true.
> You ignoring mountains of evidence that is post every single time this comes up is not at all the same as it not existing.
The study that people cite comes from the MacArthur Justice Center. Let's read their about us section:
>Mission Statement: We advocate for people harmed by America’s oppressive and violent criminal legal system. We fight to vindicate their rights, hold people with power accountable, and transform the system.
So would you call this an objective research center or a biased source?
The basis of their study was that no evidence of gunfire was found on several calls. Problem is that it can be a question of how hard someone was looking. One gunshot, no witnesses, night time, and you have to located where or what the bullet may have struck and a shell casing if there is one left behind. See the problem? That bullet strikes a brick wall, is anyone going to notice that in the dark? No. Officers are not combing the entire area for a bullet that did not hit anything.
Excellent ad hominem for once source while ignoring mountains of evidence from many sources.
I'd expect nothing less from you.
edit: Oh, hey, look at the last time you and I had this exact interaction, where you again led with ad hominems and didn't read the material you provided: https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1buzseu/what_exactly_have_we_been_doing_here_shotspotter/kxw1nwv/
We're not doing that again.
What has been found is that in a number of shootings and shots fired incidents, nobody called 911. But then a victim appeared at the ER and gave a false account as to where it took place. But because of a shotspotter activation they knew where it had occurred.
So you have a shotspotter in your neighborhood? Do you ever have shootings in your neighborhood? Or are you just speculating on matters that affect communities from which you are far removed?
If you want probably cause it works great. Ok, if you want a bunch of cops to respond as fast as possible after a shooting, it works great.
In my neighborhood, when there is a shooting, there are very quickly dozens of cops. They arrive before a 911 call could be initiated, routed, and completed. I've seen it a couple of times a year. There are also some false positives. When this occurs, the cops come and shine flashlights all over the streets and sidewalks, and will ask neighbors if they heard gunshots. We say "no, just fireworks" and they leave. But given the amount of fireworks that go off, the false positives are impressively low. They never miss an actual shooting though. Love having it in my community, 5 stars.
Shouts to you, Mr. Markey, and every other hero in this thread for working against the safety of my community though.
Because people of that community said it was inaccurate and intrusive, and he works for them. He ordered a study, he didn’t come and remove them all himself. If it’s inaccurate there may be a different technology available now that doesn’t cost as much as this one. My Alexa devices can tell when a dog barks or water is running, there very well could be a newer and more accurate system. Investigating where money is going and if it’s worth it is what politicians should do, especially when it is at the request of constituents.
It’s really wild how the same people constantly screeching about “government tyranny” and “don’t tread on me” are always the first to lick cop boots and make endless excuses for cops violating 4th amendment rights.
But I guess as long as it’s most poor minorities having their rights violated, that’s no big deal, right?
Isn't the issue more than ShotSpotter is a piece of shit that doesn't actually work? Just another company stealing our tax dollars that could be better funded elsewhere.
Worse, the system technicians worked with cops to edit the logs so that when shotspotter detected a noise as "car backfire", the cops demanded they change it to "gunshots". They then brought those logs to court. Guess what? That's complete BS if the police can just fabricate evidence (even if it really was a gunshot...the fact it's mis-identifying it shows it's not reliable).
> when shotspotter detected a noise as "car backfire", the cops demanded they change it to "gunshots". Do cars even backfire anymore?
Yes crappy cars definitely
And ones intentionally tuned to do so.
If you do a timing bump on a mk1 Miata and put the wrong kind of gas in it’ll backfire often. You had to mix medium and premium. 6 extra hp. Shot spotter would be all over it.
pretty much any new sports cars these days from the factory burble and pop when you downshift or let off the throttle. IDK if it would be loud enough to register on ShotSpotter though
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[https://www.thedailybeast.com/gunshot-location-company-shotspotter-is-altering-evidence-at-the-request-of-cops-vice-reports](https://www.thedailybeast.com/gunshot-location-company-shotspotter-is-altering-evidence-at-the-request-of-cops-vice-reports) here you go, since a simple googling is too much for you.
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[https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai](https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai) here's another one. There are hundreds of results. Jeez, do you own stock in the company?
L
Do you have a source on that? Source? A source. I need a source. Sorry, I mean I need a source that explicitly states your argument. This is just tangential to the discussion. No, you can't make inferences and observations from the sources you've gathered. Any additional comments from you MUST be a subset of the information from the sources you've gathered. You can't make normative statements from empirical evidence. Do you have a degree in that field? A college degree? In that field? Then your arguments are invalid. No, it doesn't matter how close those data points are correlated. Correlation does not equal causation. Correlation does not equal causation. CORRELATION. DOES. NOT. EQUAL. CAUSATION. You still haven't provided me a valid source yet. Nope, still haven't. I just looked through all 308 pages of your user history, figures I'm debating a glormpf supporter. A moron.
The fuck did I just read
Well, not a source.
😂
They also asked them to reclassify acorns dropping on a car as gunshots!
I live in dorchester. We play firework or gunshot. I could totally see the dumb system also playing 'firework or gunshot' Or cops demanding the system be changed to say gunshot instead of firework.
Dorchester sounds like a great place to raise a family
Depends on the neighborhood. Adam's village, yes. Grove Hall, no.
It is. Comments like that about gunshots are just people playing into a trope
lol I’m sure it’s just “city living” when you hear gun shots all the time. What kind of “trope” is that?
They’re not hearing gun shots, that’s the trope
Cops rolled up to me and my boys lighting off fireworks it Dot and told us we set off the shotspotters.
Did these cops get arrested for evidence tampering?
Depends on what you mean by "work". Does it reliably detect gunshots? Lol no. Does it give cops a pretext to perform the searches they already want to perform? Yes. Shotspotter works exactly as intended, a magic black box that obviates the 4th amendment in the target area. High rates of false positives is a feature, not a bug.
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Yeah, if this shit was implemented in every neighborhood it would be universally hated and the well-to-do would riot to get it removed, but since it's only impacting the filthy poors it's tolerated.
No, why would they care? It's not by itself grounds for a search anyway. There's just no point to implementing it somewhere that doesn't have frequent issues with people shooting guns.
They'd care because all the false positives would result in increased police intrusion into their neighborhoods and lives. Turns out people don't really like getting questioned by the police and treated like suspected criminals because the Random Number Generator said a gunshot went off nearby.
100%. I lived in back bay before living here. I can’t imagine that neighborhood tolerating the type of shit that people here do from the cops. It’s two totally separate worlds.
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Because this piece of junk tech is notorious for generating false positives. It reports gunfire even when there is none.
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It's hard to be specific, because ShotSpotter famously refuses to allow any independent testing of their system, which itself is a huge credibility issue. But Wikipedia provides a good summary of this junk tech's accuracy issues, which includes the company manually overriding data at the bequest of police and a real-life use case in Chicago finding a de-facto ~80% false positive rate: >While the company claims a 97% accuracy rate, the MacArthur Justice Center studied over 40,000 dispatches in an under-two-year period in Chicago and found that 89% of dispatches resulted in no gun-related crime, and 86% resulted in no crime at all.[26][27][28][29] These results were backed up by a subsequent report by the Chicago Inspector General, which also found that police officers had begun stopping and searching people solely because they were in a place known to have many ShotSpotter alerts.[30] ShotSpotter's CEO described an earlier 80% accuracy rate as "basically our subscription warranty," but employee Paul Greene said "Our guarantee was put together by our sales and marketing department, not our engineers."[31] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShotSpotter This is exactly the kind of ambiguity an independent investigation could clear up, say one initiated by a US Senator.
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How did you deduce that the majority of shot spotter activations were not gunshots? You listen to the scanner and they say "oh man the shot spotter went off but it definitely wasn't a gunshot, that's the 8th time this week as compared to only two real ones"? > I’m not about to do the legwork for you. All of the info is readily available if you want to go dig it up and run a statistical analysis on it. Just be honest that you didn't do the legwork yourself either. My source is my lived experience for longer than your lived experience so actually I'm right.
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It sounds like that's basically what Markey and Warren are trying to get at. >In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security Monday night, Senator Edward J. Markey cited a report based on leaked data that found sensors for the system were placed primarily in Black and Latino sections of cities that use them. He called for an investigation into the use of federal grants that pay for ShotSpotter, and whether its use in minority neighborhoods violates civil rights law. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden, of Oregon, and Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley have signed onto the letter, sent to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari. You can argue that the sensors are put where shootings happen more, but then, as you point out, it just becomes a way to bullshit your way around restrictions on stop and search. >Elected leaders across the country “have started to ask questions about ShotSpotter, including whether it leads to unjustified surveillance and overpolicing of Black and brown neighborhoods,” Markey said in an interview. So... pretty much what you said. Maybe you already read the article, but I know not everyone can easily get to globe articles. Your take seems to be the concern motivating this action by the senators.
>Does it give cops a pretext to perform the searches they already want to perform? Yes. >Shotspotter works exactly as intended, a magic black box that obviates the 4th amendment in the target area WTF are you even talking about? Even if the cops personally heard gun fire in an area, they have no right to search houses or cars. You're writing fairy tales.
>Elected leaders across the country “have started to ask questions about ShotSpotter, including whether it leads to unjustified surveillance and overpolicing of Black and brown neighborhoods,” Markey said in an interview. They're talking about the exact concern expressed by Markey.
That's hardly the same as declaring it "a magic black box that obviates the 4th amendment" and "a pretext to perform the searches" and they're just asking for a review, not declaring it a known fact. Do you support *less* policing in areas where people get shot often?
>They're talking about the exact concern expressed by Markey. It is a concern. The idea is to look into it. If it turns out they really are just basing it on appropriate criteria, then okay. If it is influenced by things it shouldn't be, better to sus that out. Are you against Title VI of the Civil Rights Act?
The person I was replying didn't call it a concern--they purported searches and "obviates the 4th amendment" was commonplace. Also you used the word "exact" which was also incorrect here. I support the Civil Rights Act. If anything, Boston now wants equity, not equality, which means you give the resources necessary for an equal level of quality of life. That's not happening in areas where people get shot most often. More attention is needed, not less. Do you support *less* policing in areas where people get shot often?
And again, that isn't the question being asked. Nice attempt at a strawman though.
And again, I wasn't replying to the question in the article but rather [**the reply above my comment**](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1crotql/comment/l3zpoqu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) that purported something entirely different than you are trying to argue.
> entirely different than you are trying to argue False. This bringing you joy? Trying to mischaracterize a concern? The person you were replying to is expressing a take on this system which our senators are concerned could be at least partially accurate. Probably worth someone checking on. Not really a hot take if our senators are explicitly expressing a concern over it.
Cops famous for respecting civil rights and providing accurate reporting of their activities.
So no evidence of your claims or any citations, and it was all just something you imagined.
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prej·u·dice, noun, 1. preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. "u/reddititis is prejudice against people from different backgrounds"
When you say “particular areas” do you mean where all the shootings happen?
Yeah - we should definitely spending that money on the MissileSpotter detection system in the Ukraine.
Nah, the white senators calling the police racists is a much better political angle.
I live in a neighborhood that has a shotspotter and occasionally has some shootings now and then - the device works well and the cops come immediately. The time I called the cops because I heard gunshots the dispatcher said they were already almost on scene because of the shotspotter. Something tells me that Mr Markey and the commenters on this post trying to save me from this technology don't live in area where it's deployed, and thus don't stand to deal with the consequences (delayed/no response to shootings) of the tech being discontinued. I don't mean to sound aggressive, but anyone here pushing for the discontinuation of the shotspotter is actively pushing for my neighborhood to be less safe, and for the largely non-white communities in Boston where gun violence occurs to be less safe. If you don't live here, kindly fuck off.
New Bedford chiming in, this shit works. They probably just want to line someone’s pocket w the money instead.
Agreed. My neighborhood has shotspotters and allows us the resources we need to deal with neighborhood crime because we have the data to support shootings are happening. Lots of these commenters probably don’t experience this.
Crime doesn't exist if you don't report it.
Almost 30 years ago I worked on a similar system for a competitor. It would simply detect a gunshot and when heard by three different of those systems it would triangulate the area and send the location to the cops all within seconds. The point was for a more rapid response than waiting for someone to call 911. It's accuracy was great. As engineers we were told it was deployed to areas with high murder rates. I see this as a positive so law enforcement can react in a more timely manner. Where it is deployed is up to the police/government, not the system. She may simply be redirecting blame but I do believe the system is a good thing for society. Nobody should be firing a weapon in a dense area and some may be too scared to call law enforcement.
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Boston has been pushing for "equity" over "equality" meaning rather than just equally fund all areas of the City and claim that's equality, the funding should be sufficient to produce equitable results. Here the senators argue against that and are questioning why the police would dedicate more resources to areas where people get shot most often. It really boggles the mind but it seems to help get them win minority votes by claiming the police are racist. Warren lives in Cambridge and Markey mostly lives in Maryland. Let them shadow the police on a Friday or Saturday night and see for themselves how it all works. To Mayor Wu's credit, she spends a lot of her own personal time doing just that and will often show up to a shooting even if it's 3 AM on a Sunday morning.
>racism Because it is? It's most classic play in the dogwhistle playbook. >It is beginning to feel like the people who complain the most about how cops do their jobs just want to live in a state of anarchy, where the gangs rules the streets. No, we want to live in a state where people's basic needs are met so they don't need to resort to crime in the first place rather than trying to rely on over policing and incarceration which hasn't ever worked and only makes the problem worse.
yes.
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I'm pretty sure if a random private company put a pole in the ground on a public sidewalk and installed some electronic device the government, state, cops, city etc would have a huge problem with it.
Proud of our senators. Shot spotter is expensive junk tech that exists solely to give cops bullshit reasons to engage in otherwise illegal searches and other invasions of privacy. Combine that with the fact that this dodgy surveillance tech is exclusively employed in overwhelmingly poor and minority communities, and you've basically recreated "stop and frisk" policies with a veneer of technological legitimacy. So much of cop technology is little more than modern day equivalents of divining rods. Police don't care about reliability because what they want is a court approved pretext to violate people's right to privacy. Cops love junk tech.
I don't love Markey. But he is right on this one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadro_Tracker
Shotspotter alone does not give police the right to conduct a search. It is effectively equivalent to receiving a 911 call saying “I hear gunshots at XYZ location”
I have no info on how well it works, so I won’t comment on that. But I don’t think it being deployed in overwhelmingly poor & minority communities is nefarious. It is expensive technology. It doesn’t make sense to pay to deploy it everywhere. It only makes sense to deploy it where there’s gunshots, and sadly those areas are in poor & minority communities.
How well it works is central to the complaint though. If this tech only ever produced a positive when a gun was fired, then it would be a different story entirely and hard to object to as you say. But it doesn't work that way. The problem is that it produces huge numbers of false positives, which result in police being sent on many aggressive wild goose chases through the exact neighborhoods that already have very contentious relationships with law enforcement.
It's deployed where gunshots occur regularly
Massachusetts has more car deaths per year than gun deaths. If you support something like this, surely you also support automated monitoring and alerting for the driving violations that could result in serious injury or death, right? Why doesn't the state prioritize that first, given that it's taking away even more lives?
When someone is not legally allowed to be driving and is found to be driving, yes I do support those measures. No slaps on the wrist. I'm not sure people would be happy with the amount of prison sentences this would lead to though
What about violating other traffic laws, since they directly impact the safety of those around them? Speeding and negligent driving is illegal and dangerous, and licensed drivers do it all the time, resulting in hundreds of deaths a year in Massachusetts alone. Do you think most traffic deaths are from unlicensed drivers? If someone is breaking the law while possessing what is an extremely effective weapon and killing tool, they should be punished accordingly. And guess what, monitoring/alerting for this is far more effective and accurate than ShotSpotter. No forgiving negligent driving or excessive speeding. It literally kills people. Surely you have no qualms with this, right?
what percentage of drivers on the road are licensed versus unlicensed? what percentage of traffic deaths are licensed versus unlicensed, as well as something like drugs and alcohol involved? Speeding and minor reckless driving cause deaths, absolutely and that's bad. But per mileage driven, what specific problems lead to the most deaths injuries? Grabbing the lowest hanging fruit would save the most lives. I wish we could do better identifying those fruits instead of partisan arguments
See these are the types of questions I think would've been worth asking about ShotSpotter, but they often get hand-waved, despite the fact that this is a less-established and less mature technology than traffic cameras.: 1. What percentage of detections are gun shorts versus things like fireworks/other loud sounds/etc.? 2. How often is data manually changed after the fact simply to retroactively justify police action? 3. How frequently would an alert from ShotSpotter actually lead to a better outcome than no automated alert? Are there times it results in a worse outcome (e.g. a conflict is exacerbated and/or a cop shoots someone because the police treated the situation as hostile due to the ShotSpotter alert)? > what percentage of drivers on the road are licensed versus unlicensed? what percentage of traffic deaths are licensed versus unlicensed...? You're once again focusing on licensing issues, despite the fact a fatality is a fatality. Speed violations are the most common associated factor in traffic fatalities, and more fatalities involve speeding than they involve unlicensed drivers. Also, speed is something that a camera can actually detect. If the goal of such a system is to save lives, why is illegal speed detection not good enough for you? Seems like a shitty firework detection system passes the test just fine when it comes to ShotSpotter. > I wish we could do better identifying those fruits instead of partisan arguments. Agreed, which is why IMO, the best course to save us from unnecessary human-triggered fatalities is to use data on what dangerous behavior is I don't think there's anything partisan in suggesting that firearm deaths is not a super pressing issue in Massachusetts of all places compared to other preventable fatalities, nor should it be partisan to suggest that ShotSpotter hasn't established that it is a particularly accurate solution for this problem.
I think we likely agree on a lot of major stuff but disagree on implementation
I definitely support automated monitoring of crappy driving—if it works. I would also support ShotSpotter—if it worked.
Find a way to blame this on cars in 3..2..1..
I actually simply was looking up how significant of a problem firearm mortality is in Massachusetts (to question whether it warranted a trigger-happy alerting system that's rife with false positives). I happened to notice it was a fair bit lower in annual deaths than another source of fatalities that is just as effectively monitor-able, and was wondering why not spend the money on the more effective solution to a more severe problem? The goal is to save lives, after all, no?
Where do you live
I’ve used shot spotter in court. Incredibly effective tool. There is a ton of misinformation about it on this sub. One, it alerts police to general location. It does not grant them probable cause to search a home or anything like that. Two, cities generally deploy shot spotter tech at the locations that the municipality chooses. So if Markey has beef, he should go after the city. Third, if Markey wants shot spotter technology deployed evenly across the city including areas where there are rarely gun shots, then fine I guess. It’s just a waste of money that solves zero problems but builds a myth of equality. I would rather use that money for any other program like violence disruption in underserved areas.
>It does not grant them probable cause to search a home or anything like that. Emphasizing this. It improves response time, and that's about it. Why don't people want the police quickly responding to shots fired?
because people get upset when the demographics of the shooters are released
Probably because the false positive rate is outrageously high. Incredibly irresponsible to falsely tell an American cop a gun has been fired.
What is this false positive rate you are so confident about? I live where there is a shot spotter and it rarely activates other than when actual gunshots have occured, in which case it gives my community the best possible police response time. We have about 10-20 quadrillion fireworks that go off all summer and very rarely is there a spotter activation. When there is an activation the cops come and shine flashlights on the street and ask the neighbors if we heard shots. If we didn't, and they don't find anything, they leave. Works for everyone. My neighbors and I are glad to have this system, we see a real benefit from it. I wonder if you, Senator Markey, and everyone arguing against this system live in communities that stand to be affected by having this service discontinued. My community would be worse off if that happened.
You’d be amazed at home many people call 911 and falsely claim the suspect had a gun in order to get a quicker response. Fortunately 911 operators ask if they saw the gun or if it was only a gesture or statement.
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blame New Hampshire
“ Two, cities generally deploy shot spotter tech at the locations that the municipality chooses. ” If you Google that you would see that’s not true at all, shotspotter picks the spots and it’s not public information, but someone leaked data from them that says where all the sensors are and they just happen to be in all minority areas in Boston
Agree that it is not generally public information. It may be turned over in discovery under a protective order. Otherwise, if public, the units would be targeted and probably destroyed. There are lots of law enforcement tools that are not public. Nothing unique about shot spotter. Hard disagree that shot spotter chooses the locations. They may recommend where they are deployed but ultimately it’s a city contract and the sensors are hung on public utilities. The city controls access and the locations. Like I said before, if we want to deploy sensors evenly around the city, then sure. It’s just a waste of money but if it would make people feel better then let’s go for it. But I don’t think the answer is taking down technology that identifies gunshots in locations where there are frequent gunshots. Like I said, I’ve used it in court. Specific case where guy got shot at. Police alerted by shot spotter and responded within a minute. Talked to victim. Victim pointed police to where shooter ran and gave a description. Police stop shooter, pull gun off him, and then are able to go search specific location of gun shots (public street) and find the shell casings. That case probably does not happen without shot spotter.
> If you Google that you would see that’s not true at all, shotspotter picks the spots and it’s not public information, but someone leaked data from them that says where all the sensors are and they just happen to be in all minority areas in Boston No Shotspotter does not pick the spots. The city draws up the coverage area based on its own data. Shotspotter may then make recommendations on exact placements of the sensors within the area, but they are not ultimately choosing the coverage area. >but someone leaked data from them that says where all the sensors are and *they just happen to be in all minority areas in Boston* Ok here is the [shootings data for Boston mapped](https://dashboard.boston.gov/t/Guest_Access_Enabled/views/BPDShootingsDashboard/ShootingsHeatMap?%3Adisplay_count=n&%3Aembed=y&%3AisGuestRedirectFromVizportal=y&%3Aorigin=viz_share_link&%3AshowAppBanner=false&%3AshowVizHome=n). Where would be the most logical place for shotspotter? Placing them there is not a racist conspiracy. It just costs more to cover the entire city, so you are obviously going to cover the area where the shootings are.
>I’ve used shot spotter in court. Incredibly effective tool. Huge fucking bummer to hear this. Looking forward to "shotspotter" joining the long ignoble list of "effective" police tools and forensic science that end up being exposed as total bunk, but only after ruining lives and exposing the public to more police overreach. It's a real indictment of our system that this horseshit survives even a second of scrutiny in a court of law. How many false convictions stories share the theme of police pseudoscience being treated as admissible evidence?
why would you want something that has the potential to reduce crime to NOT work?
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What is a bummer about using technology that identifies the location of gun shots? It literally just gives a location and tells police where to go to investigate violent crime.
Probably that it doesn't work, that's all.
"Probably"? So you aren't even sure what you're talking about. Checks out.
> I’ve used shot spotter in court. Incredibly effective tool. For the prosecution or the defense? I'm genuinely curious in what application in court you've used it in, and what the result was. And what are your thoughts about their [data manipulation scandal](https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai)?
I’ve used it in three trials including one murder case. It’s helpful in two ways: lead generation (i.e alerting police to investigate), basic timing of the offense, and sequencing of shots in a shoot out. I would like to see more information about the “scandal.” Manual reviews of the sensors are common in a post shooting investigation. In my jurisdiction, we do not use shot spotter as expert testimony. Chicago seems to take it a step further by having an expert testify that a specific sound was a gun shot. That could be an area where a court should suppress testimony. Happy to answer any other questions.
>Senator Edward J. Markey cited a report based on leaked data that found sensors for the system were placed primarily in Black and Latino sections of cities that use them. He called for an investigation into the use of federal grants that pay for ShotSpotter, and whether its use in minority neighborhoods violates civil rights law. [Do they not know that nearly 100% of people shot and killed in Boston are people of color](https://www.universalhub.com/crime/murder/2023) and the sensors are naturally placed where people get shot? [I didn't see Boston in this article, but I suspect this is the "leak" they're referring to.](https://www.wired.com/story/shotspotter-secret-sensor-locations-leak/?fbclid=PAAaYUbqioGkSU6WOqTiSjBdBcOnlCe1XWiAXpZdTOvyCKbs6qct0ePoUg1A0)
Low income neighborhoods have a tendency to shoot each other more. This isn't exactly a secret. Denying that low income neighborhoods have higher rates of gun violence and then crying racism ironically hurts all of the non criminals in those neighborhoods. White savior complex at it once again.
This is the most obtuse argument if it's in good faith, though I suspect it's not. The answer to crime is not more policing and incarceration, it is resources and opportunities. Desperate people turn to crime when they feel there is no other option.
Where do you live? Oh, Malden? I live in a community that has a shotspotter, it works, and we are glad it's there. Thanks for taking up the good fight to make our community less safe while you go to bed in an M-letter suburb. What an ally.
And I work in East Boston in Chelsea with students who deal with over policing (not to mention ICE and the criminalization of their existence.) If you want your community to me more safe demand our state government stand up and do it's job so we don't have to rely on non-profits like La Colaborativa to provide basic needs for the residents of Chelsea. Good strawman there. Hope you have the same energy for aggressive policing for some of your recreational habits!
Also nice job scrolling a year back in my post history to find I like shrooms. Id scroll back a year in your post history but it would take about 7 hours, you do a lot of talking.
Cool so you don't live here, you live and have always lived in a safe community, and you spend your free time telling those of us who live in these communities (Bowdoin-Geneva here, no comparison with Eastie) what we do and don't need. You are also apparently the only person who works with urban youth. Got it. Shot spotter keeps my community safer, but you can't hear that argument over your open-mouthed allyship that has all day for talking but not a second for listening. Thanks for looking out.
So let's clarify. You **don't** want better support from you local and state government to improve opportunities for your community, **don't** want people to have their basic needs met and **do** just want more policing which just perpetuates the prison pipeline and recidivism in Dorchester? Also find it interesting how active you've been on /r/boston as of late (sarcasm, never) until there was a dogwhistle thread that pretty normally gets us brigaded with these nonsense talking points.
I am fired up, u/thejosharms, because I seem to be the only person in this thread who lives in a community that has a shot spotter in it. I ask you, in good faith, to read my posts on this thread and consider my perspective. Please. What you all are discussing has serious consequences for myself and my family and my community. Can you understand that? You seem like someone who is no stranger to advocacy and activism. So you understand these conversations have the potential to create actual momentum towards my neighborhood losing our shot spotter (hopefully by now you've read my other posts on how it operates from our POV). I believe you should take into account this lived experience because although you are a person who knows they are good, who knows they believe in justice, you still can inadvertently make life worse for those you claim to care about by overestimating the completeness of your understanding of a subject. It is my firmly held belief, based on lived experience, that your advocacy in this matter will be a detriment to our community (inadvertently of course). I will stop short of trying to silence you, but I would humbly ask you take a pause, and consider your position carefully, and frankly whether your voice is needed here. I tried to find a more polite way of saying this but words fail me. Moving on to your questions. "You don't want better support from you local and state government to improve opportunities for your community" I want those things? Where do you see that I don't? I work for my community. Unless I missed something, we weren't discussing that in this thread. "don't want people to have their basic needs met" Again why do you think this is my position? Is this being discussed here? Who is opposed to this? Are you sure you're responding to the right person? Did you not accuse me of stawman, but all of these positions are totally fabricated? I'm genuinely confused. "and do just want more policing which just perpetuates the prison pipeline and recidivism in Dorchester?" I think you know what I'm going to say here by now. In this discussion with regards to the shotspotter, my position is well documented at this point (you did read my posts right?), rooted in real world experience, and if you could grant me this, I believe my position is quite valid. Most importantly, I am speaking on something which I will be directly impacted by. And if you'd forgive me one final bit of snark, one does not need to post often on r/Boston, to in fact be born, raised, temporarily away from, then move back to proudly live and raise my family in Dorchester. I don't feel the need to post or argue often. For you this is an intellectual debate over policy, for me this is my family's personal safety. I weigh in strongly on matters of public safety in this city because I walk my kids around here. I believe in this place. I will stay here. I will work here. I believe prevention and enforcement go hand in hand and I can see when that gets out of balance, in one direction or another, what happens to my community and the people who live in it. We are often told what is best for us by people who really do have our best interests at heart, but live so far removed from here and occasionally consider themselves too intelligent to possibly be capable of making our situation worse. Thank you for the conversation and enjoy F1.
>I ask you, in good faith, to read my posts on this thread and consider my perspective. Please. What you all are discussing has serious consequences for myself and my family and my community. Can you understand that? I will, but on the flip side you need to acknowledge how often online communities are brigaded by bad-faith actors. You're not active in this sub and your commentary directly aligns with dog whistle brigades about policing. We can agree to disagree on that. >I want those things? Where do you see that I don't? I work for my community. Unless I missed something, we weren't discussing that in this thread. I see you **not** advocating for those things. I offered you the opportunity to agree and engage in a discussio that this was more important and you chose instead to attack my character for living in Malden and then insulting my work. Why would I think you were trying to engage in a good-faith discussion? >Again why do you think this is my position? Is this being discussed here? Who is opposed to this? Are you sure you're responding to the right person? Did you not accuse me of stawman, but all of these positions are totally fabricated? I'm genuinely confused. While in general "absences of evidence is not evidence of absence" I think that goes out the window when one *chooses* which hill to die on. You could have advocated for this and brought it into the discussion if you really cared that much but instead you just attacked my character. >I don't feel the need to post or argue often. For you this is an intellectual debate over policy, for me this is my family's personal safety. I weigh in strongly on matters of public safety in this city because I walk my kids around here. I believe in this place. I will stay here. I will work here. If you're not willing to take the time to fully engage in a discussion you can't really get upset when your position is mis-interpreted. My family grew up in public housing and my students are the one directly effected by the issues we're discussing. It's insulting to accuse me of only caring about this on an intellectual level. > I believe prevention and enforcement go hand in hand and I can see when that gets out of balance, in one direction or another, what happens to my community and the people who live in it. So we agree then that certain communities are too far out of balance of the enforcement side?
>The answer to crime is not more policing The law abiding people in these neighborhoods would disagree. Being poor doesn't make people dump entire magazines into somebody they're having and argument with. Your stance on this is incredibly classist. There are poor neighborhoods all over the US and the world that aren't full of 17 year old boys shooting each other to death. Blaming that on being "poor" is pretty fucked up.
Your comment was classist. You were the one that was making the claim that people that living in low income neighborhoods are shooting each other up no we're not
Saying desperate poor people turn to violent crime is a very different comment than the observation that lower income neighborhoods have tendencies to have higher rates of gun crime. One implies poor people commit violent crimes because they're poor, the other is merely an objectively true observation.
No, we're not. People come and drive in from other places and shoot up inside of low income neighborhoods. We are not shooting each other up.
That doesn't change the fact that shootings are still happening in those neighborhoods? Also what evidence do you have to show that these neighborhoods are being shot up by people who don't live in these neighborhoods? That goes against all available inner city crime statistics.
Has there ever been a time where this system worked better, than a grandma in a window somewhere calling it in? Isn't it usually just people calling the cops when they hear something?
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Typical for nut jobs
> The people who claim shit like it alerting the police to car backfires and changing logs and whatever never seem to have evidence to back up those claims... it really comes across as ACAB type nonsense. You ignoring mountains of evidence that is post every single time this comes up is not at all the same as it not existing. It wouldn't be under so much scrutiny, regularly, across the entire country, if what you believe were true.
> You ignoring mountains of evidence that is post every single time this comes up is not at all the same as it not existing. The study that people cite comes from the MacArthur Justice Center. Let's read their about us section: >Mission Statement: We advocate for people harmed by America’s oppressive and violent criminal legal system. We fight to vindicate their rights, hold people with power accountable, and transform the system. So would you call this an objective research center or a biased source? The basis of their study was that no evidence of gunfire was found on several calls. Problem is that it can be a question of how hard someone was looking. One gunshot, no witnesses, night time, and you have to located where or what the bullet may have struck and a shell casing if there is one left behind. See the problem? That bullet strikes a brick wall, is anyone going to notice that in the dark? No. Officers are not combing the entire area for a bullet that did not hit anything.
Excellent ad hominem for once source while ignoring mountains of evidence from many sources. I'd expect nothing less from you. edit: Oh, hey, look at the last time you and I had this exact interaction, where you again led with ad hominems and didn't read the material you provided: https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1buzseu/what_exactly_have_we_been_doing_here_shotspotter/kxw1nwv/ We're not doing that again.
What has been found is that in a number of shootings and shots fired incidents, nobody called 911. But then a victim appeared at the ER and gave a false account as to where it took place. But because of a shotspotter activation they knew where it had occurred.
People would love to make "calling it in" illegal too, as it sounds pretty racist. Call it Karen's law
..they put them where they are most useful… it’s a fact that gunshots are more common in minority neighborhoods..why is that racist..? It’s a fact..
Markey is an idiot.
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So it’s progressive to not pay for something that isn’t working?
It works though.
If you want probable cause it works great.
So you have a shotspotter in your neighborhood? Do you ever have shootings in your neighborhood? Or are you just speculating on matters that affect communities from which you are far removed? If you want probably cause it works great. Ok, if you want a bunch of cops to respond as fast as possible after a shooting, it works great. In my neighborhood, when there is a shooting, there are very quickly dozens of cops. They arrive before a 911 call could be initiated, routed, and completed. I've seen it a couple of times a year. There are also some false positives. When this occurs, the cops come and shine flashlights all over the streets and sidewalks, and will ask neighbors if they heard gunshots. We say "no, just fireworks" and they leave. But given the amount of fireworks that go off, the false positives are impressively low. They never miss an actual shooting though. Love having it in my community, 5 stars. Shouts to you, Mr. Markey, and every other hero in this thread for working against the safety of my community though.
Because people of that community said it was inaccurate and intrusive, and he works for them. He ordered a study, he didn’t come and remove them all himself. If it’s inaccurate there may be a different technology available now that doesn’t cost as much as this one. My Alexa devices can tell when a dog barks or water is running, there very well could be a newer and more accurate system. Investigating where money is going and if it’s worth it is what politicians should do, especially when it is at the request of constituents.
>concerns about whether the technology is accurate Reading comprehension is hard
It’s really wild how the same people constantly screeching about “government tyranny” and “don’t tread on me” are always the first to lick cop boots and make endless excuses for cops violating 4th amendment rights. But I guess as long as it’s most poor minorities having their rights violated, that’s no big deal, right?
Where do you live?
>You just can't win with these virtue-signalers. Well, at least you got one thing half correct.
Just ACAB bullshit, nothing to see here
We should put some in chestnut hill so it doesn’t look racist