NRA-ILA 8/2/2021
David Chipman, the Biden administration’s pick to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is well known for his employment as a “senior policy advisor” with major gun control organizations, notably Everytown’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” and currently, Giffords.
Sandwiched between these two jobs, however, was a stint with ShotSpotter as its “Senior Vice President North American Sales,” from 2013 to 2016. ShotSpotter is a private company that markets audio recording and notification technology – hidden microphones that pinpoint loud noises and screen these for the sound of gunshots. This “precision policing platform” claims to give law enforcement agencies “access to timely and accurate intelligence” so they may “more rapidly and precisely deploy resources to respond to crime, as well as proactively prevent it.” The company maintains that the “platform is highly data-driven and includes community protections and engagement opportunities to help improve police-community relations.”
A 2016 Forbes article confirms that “bookings spiked under Chipman” – the technology had been deployed in more than 90 cities, including Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, with ShotSpotter typically charging between $65,000 and $90,000 per square mile per year for the product. Quoted in the article, Chipman highlighted his role in plugging the validity of the product and generating buy-in: “I felt like I contributed what I could, which was [to] help bring the technology to a level of legitimacy within law enforcement.”
Since then, questions have surfaced about the “legitimacy” and effectiveness of ShotSpotter as a crime-reduction and crime-deterrence tool. An article that assessed the impact of the technology during the time Chipman was a senior company official (“ShotSpotter Alerts Police To Lots Of Gunfire, But Produces Few Tangible Results”) reviewed information provided by law enforcement in seven cities and concluded that police responding to gunshot notifications “were unable to find evidence of gunshots between 30%-70% of the time.” In Milwaukee, WI, for example, out of 10,285 alerts received between January 2013 and September 2015, just over 70% (7,201) were classified as “unfounded/unable to locate.”
The MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law determined that the “false alert” rates for Chicago were even higher, after analyzing ShotSpotter-initiated police deployments between July 1, 2019 and April 14, 2021. Although ShotSpotter markets its system with a “97% aggregate accuracy rate,” according to the study, the rate is not only “unsupported by actual evidence” but the “overwhelming majority of ShotSpotter alerts turn up nothing,” resulting in wasted police resources and what the study calls “dead-end police deployments.”
More:
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20210802/bidens-atf-nominee-and-mass-surveillance-erosion-of-civil-liberties
