When a serious public safety matter is on the table, there’s no room for decision-making based on politics, stubbornness, or flip and misleading comments.
Yet that’s what Chicagoans are getting right now on the important issue of whether to keep or drop ShotSpotter, the gunshot detection system at the center of an expected City Council showdown on Wednesday.
A contingent of council members are aiming to garner the votes needed to pass an ordinance that would give Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling — instead of Mayor Brandon Johnson — the authority to make a new deal to keep ShotSpotter online, as the Sun-Times’ Fran Spielman and Tom Schuba reported. The system is in place in 12 of 22 police districts but is scheduled to go offline Sept. 22.
We urge alderpersons who are now on the fence to vote with their colleagues. Mayoral authority is important. The safety of Chicagoans who are most at risk of gun violence is more so.
This editorial board has been skeptical of ShotSpotter’s cost and overall effectiveness. But we’re also dismayed by Johnson’s inflexible determination to put a campaign promise ahead of the very real concerns of council members from South Side and West Side neighborhoods where gunfire is a daily threat. Snelling, Johnson’s pick for superintendent, is also a strong ShotSpotter proponent.
So what happened to listening to the voices of experience?
Johnson didn’t help matters on Monday with a juvenile and dismissive comment referring to ShotSpotter as “a walkie-talkie on a pole”; his straw-man argument that the system doesn’t deter gun violence, which it’s not designed to do; and his incorrect statement that the city spent $100 million on the technology, when the actual cost so far is some $53 million since 2018.
What do comments like that say to aldermen about how seriously the Fifth Floor of City Hall takes their concerns?
The matter should have been resolved months ago, in collaboration with council members and police. Yet Johnson announced the decision to scrap the technology with no plan in place for a substitute, forcing the city to pay a premium on an extension. Sending mixed signals — ShotSpotter is bad and has to go, but it’s good enough to keep for another six months — made no sense, as we wrote in February.
No overlooking the numbers
Who can blame council members for trying to take away Johnson’s authority in this? They represent communities where even well-intentioned residents don’t always call 911, for a variety of reasons, when they hear suspected gunfire. In those neighborhoods, technology to alert police and other first responders can indeed save lives.
There’s solid evidence that ShotSpotter accomplishes that, in potentially dozens of instances every year. In a recent Chicago Tribune op-ed, researchers from the University of Chicago Crime Lab analyzed shooting fatality rates at the boundaries of police districts that do and do not have ShotSpotter; their analysis found a “3-in-4 chance that the technology saves about 85 lives per year.” Shooting fatality rates were about 4 percentage points lower, the researchers pointed out, in areas with ShotSpotter than in areas without it.
There’s no overlooking those numbers. Is the city willing to risk 85 lives on the chance that people will suddenly start calling 911 and be able to pinpoint for police where a victim might be, and that first responders can then get there in time to render first aid?
The numbers also show quicker police response times with ShotSpotter, as the Sun-Times’ Fran Spielman and Frank Main reported in May. The average response time to a ShotSpotter alert alone was 8 minutes, 6 seconds, compared to 10 minutes, 11 seconds when ShotSpotter was combined with a 911 call. With a 911 call alone, the average response time grew to 10 minutes, 48 seconds.
Granted, ShotSpotter is not perfect. Other municipalities have scrapped the technology, though over 170 cities still have it and the overall retention rate is 99%, with 40% of municipalities opting to expand the use of the technology, Ralph Clark, president and CEO of ShotSpotter’s parent company, SoundThinking, told us when he met with the board on Monday.
As for the criticism that ShotSpotter leads to overpolicing of communities of color, Clark made this point: “Overpolicing is when you give me a ticket for a busted tail light instead of giving me a chance to fix it like you would in Lincoln Park. It’s not overpolicing when police are showing up and prioritizing responding to gunfire. That’s policing that communities want.”
City Council on Wednesday should prioritize what ought to be the overriding goal: taking a step to keep Chicagoans safe — and alive.
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