Chicago City Wire

Chicago City Council this week is teeing up two legislative initiatives to stop Mayor Brandon Johnson’s planned phaseout of ShotSpotter, a proven life-saving gunshot detection technology.

Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) is calling for a special session to extend the contract with SoundThinking, the California-based company that invented ShotSpotter. And Ald. David Moore (17th), intends to force a vote on an ordinance compelling the police superintendent to extend the contract. City Council approved the Moore-sponsored ordinance in May.

Johnson has remained adamant that Council has no authority to wrest control over the future of ShotSpotter from the mayor’s office. He plans to move ahead with phasing it out beginning on September 22, and to completely deactivate it on November 22. He campaigned for the mayor’s office promising its removal, arguing its ineffectiveness, but extended its coverage through the Democratic National Convention in August.

On Monday, he mocked the technology calling it a “walkie-talkie on a pole.”

The fight over ShotSpotter comes with the release of the data from the Chicago Police Department showing that during the first eight months of 2024, ShotSpotter alerted police to 29,829 gunshot events in the wards where it is operating, 73 percent of which had no corresponding 9-1-1 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 9-1-1 call.

ShotSpotter supporters argued that the technology not only saves lives by alerting first responders to gunshot victims, but it’s also an absolute necessity in some parts of the city where residents are reluctant to call 9-1-1.

“There was recently a mass shooting in my ward,” Alderwoman Monique Scott (24th) said during a floor debate in May. “90 shots. Six Shooters. And not one person called the police. It’s [ShotSpotter] safe for the DNC, but not for my constituents.”

Chicago first embraced the technology in 2012 and has deployed it in high crime areas on the South and West Sides where there are larger Black and Latino populations.   

A lawsuit filed July 2022 by the Washington D.C.-based MacArthur Justice Center, with an amicus filed by three Chicago-based activist groups, including Lucy Parsons Labs, charges that the technology is both ineffective and unfairly targets Black and Latino communities.

“More than 90% of all ShotSpotter alerts turn up nothing,” a statement from MacArthur said when the lawsuit was announced. “Despite knowing the system is overwhelmingly and dangerously untrustworthy, the City of Chicago deliberately relies on a technology that provides no proven public safety benefit and, instead, enables discriminatory policing…”

Replying to an email from City Wire for an earlier story, Freddy Martinez, spokesperson for Lucy Parsons, said that the lawsuit was ongoing.

“The city attempted to dismiss it, but we were able to keep it alive,” he wrote. “Right now, we are still in the process of serving discovery on the City but have no indication on when that process may end.”

Alderwoman Silvana Tabares (23rd) said during the May debate that opponents were only interested in using the money saved from cancelling ShotSpotter for “their own pet projects.”

The city has spent about $49 million on ShotSpotter since 2018.