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from the better-way-to-find-dalmations-and-leopards? dept.
For years, gunshot detection has been bought, and criticized, by cities nationwide.
With the president at Camp David for most of the weekend, the United States Secret Service decided that now would be a good time to fire off a few live rounds on the grounds of the White House—so it can evaluate a gunshot-detection technology known as ShotSpotter.
The mounted microphone and computer system is designed to detect gunshots via their audio signature and send prompt alerts to local authorities.
In a series of tweets on Saturday morning, the CEO of ShotSpotter, Ralph Clark, said that 90 cities and 10 university campuses currently use it, including recent additions in Louisville, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio. The system has been in use by the Metropolitan Police Department—which serves the city of Washington, DC—for many years.
However, the company has sometimes been criticized for being overly expensive, not particularly effective, and potentially invasive of people’s privacy.
Recently, San Antonio, Texas, decided that, after using the service for a year, ShotSpotter was no longer worth the price tag—over $500,000, which includes the cost of the service plus officer overtime. During the year that it was in use, the city only arrested four people as a result of the gunshot detection setup, or $136,500 per arrest, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
-- submitted from IRC
[How many shots could a ShotSpotter spot, if a ShotSpotter could spot shots? source --Ed.]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday August 30 2017, @02:45AM
Maybe it's because the Secret Service know more about its effectiveness than Washington bureaucrats. The primary purpose of this thing is as a deterrent, whether you switch it on or not. It's actual effectiveness is pretty marginal, so the economically most sensible way to deploy it would be to buy it, publicise it widely, install it very obviously, and then never bother paying for further upkeep or a license. In the case of the S-S, their existing security measures are probably already far better than Shotguesser, so there's no need for the security theatre of having it.