ShotSpotter -- the greatest thing since the AWB

[Bogie]

Our DA doesn't bother to send lawyers to murder trials.
 

[ConstitutionCowboy]

Either the logic of this is too obvious to be seen as efficacious, or it is purposefully ignored to the benefit of the ends sought. I go with the latter. 

Woody

[230RN]

That's why non-infringed defense of life, limb, and property is paramount to a free society. How does that saying go? Oh, yeah: "An armed society is a polite society". Polite people neither murder, maim, nor steal.

Woody

Where'd you get that saying?  I'd like to use it sometime.

"Uninfringed."  Now you're heading into my territory. I've heard tell that maybe the old wild wild west was not as wild as the movies and TV made / make it out to be.

After all, who would sit through a western with no rustlers, evil bankers, card sharks, interfamily feuds, intrafamily feuds, bad guys and drunks being thrown out through the saloon doors, a mule-mounted stranger gunning down five guys from fifty feet away by fanning his piece from the hip...

Oh, and F Troop wthout Wrangler Jane...

Terry, 230RN

REF:

Melody Patterson as Wrangler Jane.  Note gun.

Pic credit in properties.

[MechAg94]

https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/four-problems-with-the-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-system/
Four Problems with the ShotSpotter Gunshot Detection System

ShotSpotter false alarms send police on numerous trips (in Chicago, more than 60 times a day) into communities for no reason and on high alert expecting to potentially confront a dangerous situation. Given the already tragic number of shootings of Black people by police, that is a recipe for trouble.

That is a lot of false alarms.

The worst part about it is David Chipman worked for them.
https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2021/08/25/chicago-watchdog-says-shotspotter-does-little-to-stop-crime-n49244

I also heard the cost might be as much as $11 million a year.  That could pay a lot of extra police officers and/or prosecutors.

[JTHunter]

Our DA doesn't bother to send lawyers to murder trials.

That is why we need to be the "New Minutemen".  We are our own first line of defense and, in the course of defending ourselves, if a person is committing a serious crime is treated accordingly, the number of people likely to commit such crimes will be reduced.

[230RN]

^

That is why we need to be the "New Minutemen".  We are our own first line of defense and, in the course of defending ourselves, if a person is committing a serious crime is treated accordingly, the number of people likely to commit such crimes will be reduced.

I have often recommended that everybody --everybody --gets a gun, and then 'we let natural selection work its magic until there's only one crime kingpin left. Then we go after him for tax evasion."

And people think I'm just kidding around.

But remember the St. Valentine's Day massacre.

There'd be some innocent casualties, but I suspect it would be about the same rate as in the present situation, then drop to near-zero as we approach the "One Kingpin" situation.

I call it Terry's Theory of Crime Reduction.

Terry, 230RN

[AmbulanceDriver]

I'll try to find the article, but I read a couple of different pieces in the last couple of weeks regarding the ShotSpotter system where people were wrongfully convicted based on ShotSpotter "evidence" alone.   Turns out that the company was allegedly reclassifying non-gunshot logged events into gunshots to "prove" someone shot someone else. 

ETA:

Here's one - pretty damning in my opinion.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai

[WLJ]

This is AFTER they installed ShotSpotter.
Yeah, it works wonders 

Louisville monthly homicides in double digits for 19 straight months
https://www.wave3.com/2021/08/28/louisville-monthly-homicides-double-digits-19-straight-months/

[MechAg94]

I'll try to find the article, but I read a couple of different pieces in the last couple of weeks regarding the ShotSpotter system where people were wrongfully convicted based on ShotSpotter "evidence" alone.   Turns out that the company was allegedly reclassifying non-gunshot logged events into gunshots to "prove" someone shot someone else. 

ETA:

Here's one - pretty damning in my opinion.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai

Good write up.  Sounds like it might be okay as a detection system, but it falls very very short when they try to use it as evidence against people.  The court should never allow it as evidence without better evaluation of its accuracy/integrity.  At the least, there needs to be records and procedures for saving the raw audio files and archiving them such that they cannot be altered. 

If it can't be used as evidence, then the cost may not be worth it.  Sounds like cops were grasping at anything available to pin the crime on the people they "know" did it even if the evidence is worthless.  And the company representative was happy to lie about the evidence. 

Over the years, ShotSpotter’s claims about its accuracy have increased, from 80 percent accurate to 90 percent accurate to 97 percent accurate. According to Greene, those numbers aren’t actually calculated by engineers, though.

“Our guarantee was put together by our sales and marketing department, not our engineers,” Greene told a San Francisco court in 2017. “We need to give them [customers] a number … We have to tell them something. … It’s not perfect. The dot on the map is simply a starting point.”

In May, the MacArthur Justice Center analyzed ShotSpotter data and found that over a 21-month period 89 percent of the alerts the technology generated in Chicago led to no evidence of a gun crime and 86 percent of the alerts led to no evidence a crime had been committed at all.

[ConstitutionCowboy]

Where'd you get that saying?  I'd like to use it sometime.

"Uninfringed."  Now you're heading into my territory. I've heard tell that maybe the old wild wild west was not as wild as the movies and TV made / make it out to be.

After all, who would sit through a western with no rustlers, evil bankers, card sharks, interfamily feuds, intrafamily feuds, bad guys and drunks being thrown out through the saloon doors, a mule-mounted stranger gunning down five guys from fifty feet away by fanning his piece from the hip...

Oh, and F Troop wthout Wrangler Jane...

Terry, 230RN

REF:

Melody Patterson as Wrangler Jane.  Note gun.

Pic credit in properties.

I think I saw it on the internet some where ...

Woody

[230RN]

 

Good write up.  Sounds like it might be okay as a detection system, but it falls very very short when they try to use it as evidence against people.  The court should never allow it as evidence without better evaluation of its accuracy/integrity.  At the least, there needs to be records and procedures for saving the raw audio files and archiving them such that they cannot be altered. 

If it can't be used as evidence, then the cost may not be worth it.  Sounds like cops were grasping at anything available to pin the crime on the people they "know" did it even if the evidence is worthless.  And the company representative was happy to lie about the evidence. 

Agreed.

Bolding mine.

With my normal geriatric "paranoia," I'm beginning to wonder if the enforcement officials' apparently irrational defense of the system is based on its possible real future use as an "insurrection detector."

Note I did not say "riot detector" or "peaceful protest" detector, since officials don't seem to care about those things.

[MechAg94]

I don't know if there is any great planning to it.  I think the company billed itself as the answer to violent crime (with anti-gun people cheering it) and convince politicians to give them a bunch of money.  They talked up the system and made up numbers on how accurate it is.  Police investigators and prosecutors get the idea to drag the data into court to support flimsy cases against people and sell it to ignorant juries (and apparently ignorant Judges).