Mayor Johnson’s mixed signals on ShotSpotter add up to another misstep

The public deserves two things in the wake of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s move Tuesday to cancel the city’s ShotSpotter contract: a clear-as-crystal answer as to why he thinks the pricey system is ineffective — and a suitable replacement for the gunfire-detection technology that the city’s top cop favors.

Instead, Chicagoans received yet another one of those muddled and maddeningly contradictory “solutions” that have become so typical of the Johnson administration.

The mayor said he is ditching ShotSpotter when the city’s $49 million contract ends Friday — but will keep the technology in place through Sept. 22, through a new contract in order to aid crime fighting efforts through the summer and during the high-profile Democratic National Convention in August.

That makes ShotSpotter simultaneously bad enough to get rid of now, and yet good enough to keep around for another six months. Only in Johnson’s City Hall does this make sense.

Ineffective, but also life-saving?

Johnson campaigned for mayor with the promise of ending the SpotShotter contract — and not totally without reason.

With high-tech audio monitors, the technology was successfully pitched to Chicago and other municipalities as being able to hear gunshots with 97% accuracy and immediately summon police.

But a 2021 study by MacArthur Justice Center researchers found 40,000 ShotSpotter alerts between July 2019 and April 2021 resulted in no report being filed by responding officers. And only 10% of the alerts likely involved guns.

In fact, during a 2017 attempted murder case in San Francisco, a ShotSpotter forensic analyst testified that his company’s accuracy computations did not come from engineers, but from the corporation’s sales and marketing department.

The Chicago Inspector General’s Office has also questioned ShotSpotter’s effectiveness, finding the technology rarely leads to investigatory stops or evidence of gun crimes.

For its part, SoundThinking, the company that owns ShotSpotter, says the devices in Chicago have saved more than 125 lives and led to the recovery of 3,000 illegal guns and more than 25,000 pieces of evidence.

And Johnson’s own hand-picked top cop, Supt. Larry Snelling, has been a big ShotSpotter supporter. Last month, he called it a crucial tool in addressing gun and gang violence.

“Because of this technology, officers have been able to get to scenes quicker and do outstanding work that people don’t even know they do,” Snelling told attendees in a community meeting, according to Block Club Chicago.

SoundThinking’s figures certainly shouldn’t be taken as gospel. But Snelling and other proponents, like Ald. Chris Taliaferro, clearly see value in ShotSpotter that Johnson, and the activists who pushed to get rid of it, do not — and the views of proponents, especially when it comes to addressing crime in communities where gunfire is common and residents hesitate to call police, surely ought to be taken into account. Perhaps there’s a way to improve how the technology is used, instead of dumping it altogether. Sept. 22 is months away.

In any case, the public, who have already paid millions for ShotSpotter, deserve answers.

What’s next?

What will replace ShotSpotter once the contract ends in September? And what’s the plan for all those strategic centers scattered throughout police districts across the city, each with the equipment and personnel that are now being fed ShotSpotter information?

The mayor’s office says, “law enforcement and other community safety stakeholders will assess tools and programs that effectively increase both safety and trust, and issue recommendations to that effect.”

That’s so much word salad, it should’ve been served with a pepper grinder and breadsticks.

To get rid of a thing without having something on deck to replace it, especially given the police superintendent’s vocal support of the technology, is bad policy and a recipe for failure.

It also reinforces the concern that Johnson and his administration are out of their depth when it comes to addressing the city’s crime problems.

Chicagoans need real answers and solutions. The mayor wanted to keep a campaign promise. But the far more important goal is to keep Chicagoans safe,

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