This February, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced his plan to decommission ShotSpotter, a controversial gunshot-detection technology that alerts police to shootings by using hundreds of acoustic sensors throughout the city.
Johnson’s plan, which would sunset the technology in November, was the culmination of a years-long debate and a decision applauded by Chicagoans who had long contended that the technology was harmful to their neighborhoods. In 2021, Chicago’s Office of Inspector General found that less than 10 percent of ShotSpotter alerts led police to evidence of a gun-related criminal offense. It argued that the technology was escalating tensions between police and residents in neighborhoods where alerts were common. In the highly publicized case of Adam Toledo, it was a ShotSpotter alert that brought officers to Little Village and resulted in police killing the 13 year old.
Adam’s death motivated Jose Manuel Almanza Jr., a community organizer, to join the #StopShotSpotter campaign. “I personally couldn’t not do anything about it,” he said. Almanza, who is also from Little Village, was thrilled with Johnson’s decision. But like others who opposed the technology, his relief was short-lived.
Just days after Johnson’s announcement, a group of alderpeople introduced a law that breathed new life into the debate, turning what had been a fight over the merits and drawbacks of the technology into a municipal power struggle. The law, spearheaded by 17th Ward Alderperson David Moore, passed by 34-14 in May. It’s supposed to allow City Council members to decide whether ShotSpotter remains in their wards, and require the mayor to get City Council approval before removing gun violence prevention-related funding from any of the city’s 50 wards.
Moore, along with ShotSpotter’s proponents, say the technology saves lives by informing police of shootings in instances when no one calls 911 — and that Johnson shouldn’t be taking that technology from the Chicagoans who could benefit from it. “Just as communities that do not want ShotSpotter in their wards, other wards should have the ability to decide whether they want to keep the residents safe,” Moore said.
And in the middle of July, Moore introduced a new ordinance that would empower the police superintendent and City Hall attorneys to control gunshot detection technology contracts independent of the Mayor, but the measure was quickly blocked.
Even though these attempts to keep ShotSpotter have been symbolic — only Johnson has the authority to manage the contract, and after the vote, his press secretary confirmed that the city’s relationship with the tool will end as scheduled — the fight over the technology became a political football during a critical juncture of the Johnson administration. Questions leading up to passage of the new law focused largely on power and who gets to make the crucial decisions over the technology’s use, not on its benefits and drawbacks. The struggle for control, experts and activists say, can determine who has final say over police strategy and the laws that govern Chicagoans’ everyday lives.
“It’s been hard to change ShotSpotter because of all of the different ways that the police … are shielded,” Robert Vargas, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, said. “The whole debate over ShotSpotter is a microcosm of this. What was at stake here is far bigger.”
Hanging in the balance are the citizens whose lives are affected not only by the technology, but also by the crimes it’s supposed to prevent.
Assessing ShotSpotter
ShotSpotter has sensors in 35 of 50 Chicago wards, most of which are in Black and brown communities on the South and West Sides. The debate around its use mirrors those taking place in cities across the country. In June, an audit from The New York City Controller found that, of the 940 ShotSpotter alerts the New York Police Department responded to last June, only 13 percent were confirmed shootings. New York has until December to decide whether it will keep using the technology.
SoundThinking, the California-based company behind ShotSpotter, claims a 97 percent accuracy rate for identifying gunshots through its computerized algorithm and analysts who verify that the noises are actually gunfire. A growing body of research, however, has raised questions about not only the technology’s efficacy, but also the ethics of its use. The MacArthur Justice Center analyzed ShotSpotter alerts from July 2019 through April 2021 and found that they led Chicago Police to more than 40,000 fruitless deployments. And a 2023 paper from researchers at Duke University argued that ShotSpotter diverts Chicago Police resources from confirmed 911 emergencies and delays emergency response times.
By the end of the contract, Chicago will have spent nearly $50 million on ShotSpotter.
A Power Play?
Moore led the effort to take the battle over ShotSpotter to the ward-level with help from a SoundThinking lobbyist, who sent council members multiple drafts of an original and a substitute version of the order, according to emails uncovered by The Chicago Reader. Moore’s ward, which covers parts of Chicago Lawn, Marquette Park, Gresham, Auburn Gresham and West Englewood, currently has 80 ShotSpotter sensors, according to an analysis by The South Side Weekly, and saw 32 fatal shootings last year. Generally, Moore has framed his argument around the mayor’s use of power. At a meeting of the City Council Committee on Police and Fire on April 1, Moore described Johnson’s decision to end ShotSpotter as “unilateral.” (It’s worth noting that Mayor Rahm Emanuel didn’t seek city council approval before inking a $33 million deal with ShotSpotter in 2018. Neither did Mayor Lori Lightfoot when she extended the contract twice).
Moore has questioned the mayor’s choice to keep ShotSpotter active through the Democratic National Convention in August. “Either it works or it doesn’t,” Moore said. “And if it’s working for the DNC, then it needs to work for the constituents here in Chicago.”
Almanza is skeptical of this argument. “It wasn’t until this moment, where a Black mayor said we are going to cancel this contract that is harming Black and brown people, and then we are going to reinvest in these Black and brown communities, that these alders were all of a sudden interested in ShotSpotter,” Almanza said. “They’re doing this just out of a power play.”
In an email to The Trace, the mayor’s communications director, Ronnie Reese, wrote, “The contract remains cancelled [sic], and the DNC has no bearing on that decision.”
Dick Simpson served as alderperson of the 44th Ward for eight years. Now a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois Chicago, Simpson said that, because there’s no governmental process by which the City Council can force the mayor to sign a contract, Moore’s ordinance is symbolic.
“What they’re really arguing about is can the City Council require the mayor to get their approval to change this contract,” Simpson said. “They’re clearly trying to register their dissatisfaction with not only how he handled this particular tool, but with the crime level, overall.”
What Chicagoans Want
While the issue has become a power struggle within the City Council, it is very real to the Chicagoans who have to live with the problems that ShotSpotter is trying to solve. Maria Pike is a longtime gun violence prevention advocate. She sits on the board of Chicago Survivors and works with Moms Demand Action (Moms Demand Action is part of Everytown for Gun Safety, which provides financial grants to The Trace).
In August 2012, Pike’s eldest son, Ricky, was shot and killed outside his Logan Square apartment. Pike views ShotSpotter as a tool meant to help police solve shootings. She doesn’t understand the logic behind the push to remove it, because she believes that communities on the South and West Sides should be given more resources to respond to gun violence – not less.
Proponents like Pike share a common refrain: “If ShotSpotter saves one life,” she said, “ then it’s worth the millions of dollars.”
Navjot Heer, a #StopShotSpotter organizer, understands why people like Pike believe that ShotSpotter helps police do their jobs. “It’s frustrating that this company has been able to lie to folks and present itself as a solution to gun violence,” Heer said.
The #StopShotSpotter campaign has begun an ambitious canvassing effort on the South and West Sides to hear about alternative methods residents want to keep them safe.
“These communities and neighborhoods barely ever received investment from the city, so the removal of ShotSpotter has been perceived by many people as like taking away something from them. And that feels incredibly unjust and unfair,” Heer said. “Our responsibility is to show up, listen, and share more information about how this technology actually works or doesn’t work, so that we can arrive at solutions together.”
