ShotSpotter Facts Frequently Asked Questions

ShotSpotter is a vital tool in any city's toolbox to assist law enforcement in delivering efficient, effective, and equitable responses to criminal gunfire. That being said, it would be a mistake to frame ShotSpotter's greatest purpose as a system solely used to lead to arrests and reduce crime.

What gunshot detection technology has proven to remedy is the chronic underreporting of criminal gunfire. An important fact that most people do not know is that 80-90% of gunfire goes unreported via the traditional 9-1-1 system. This fact has been independently researched and documented by Brookings Institute among many others and is the collective experience of over 160 cities where ShotSpotter is deployed.

ShotSpotter fills that gap to provide real-time and precise digital alerts to virtually all gunfire in its coverage area.

This critical awareness provides at least 3 important public safety benefits:

Lives saved.

• ShotSpotter has led police to hundreds of gunshot-wound victims with no corresponding 9-1-1 call, enabling them to bring care to victims who may otherwise not receive the aid they need, resulting in hundreds of lives saved in Oakland, Chicago, Albuquerque, Pittsburgh, and more than 180 cities across the country where ShotSpotter is deployed.

Increased collection of ballistic evidence and improved investigations

• Research shows that ShotSpotter improves evidence collection by officers responding to shooting incidents. According to the Urban Institute, police agencies using ShotSpotter have a rate of finding shell casings that is up to three times higher than those who do not, due to the precise location provided by ShotSpotter alerts. These shell casings processed through NIBIN can connect shooting incidents to the crime gun and ultimately the shooter.

Data and response inform intervention strategies and build community trust.

• The accumulation of gunfire incident data over time can help law enforcement better understand and strategize against gun violence patterns, leading to more effective policing strategies and increased community engagement.
• When communities see police and first responders show up – because they are notified – to gunfire incidents, it builds trust that safety in their neighborhoods matter. The many residents who are victimized by the few serial trigger-pullers deserve a response to gunfire just as much as any other residents expect and deserve appropriate police response when in need.

ShotSpotter helps drive positive outcomes:

• An independent study by the NYU Policing Project and a Purdue University social scientist found that eight police beats in St. Louis County with ShotSpotter saw a 30% decrease in gun-related assaults, compared to eight other police beats without ShotSpotter.
• An independent study by the Center For Crime Science and Violence Prevention in the Winston Salem, N.C. market showed that the deployment of ShotSpotter resulted in a 24% decrease in aggravated assaults in the community. Comparable markets in the area showed an increase in aggravated assaults during the same time period, with aggravated assaults down 38% in Winston Salem vs. the other markets.
• Southern Illinois University conducted a study in Cincinnati that showed a 46% reduction in violent crime after ShotSpotter was deployed.

The Journal of Urban Healthy Study, the source of this claim, has some significant procedural flaws.

In this case, the study considered data from across entire counties, whereas ShotSpotter coverage areas typically only cover a small portion of counties. Because ShotSpotter sensors do not detect and report gunfire incidents outside the coverage area where they are deployed, the system would not be able to alert law enforcement to incidents in most of the geographic areas that were analyzed in this study. For example, just 3.1% of St. Louis County is in the ShotSpotter coverage area, making findings across the entire county inapplicable to ShotSpotter’s technology.

Bottomline: these results are not credible and need to be dismissed.

While the ShotSpotter system detects many loud, impulsive sounds, we use sophisticated technology and well-known science to filter out sounds that are not likely to be gunfire. Those non-gunfire sounds are not published to customers as gunfire. ShotSpotter technology has a 97% accuracy rate for detections across all police department customers nationwide for the last 4 years. This statistic has been independently verified by data analytics firm Edgeworth Analytics.

This is why over 180 cities rely on the ShotSpotter technology to detect and alert law enforcement to instances of gunfire. With patented technology and highly trained human reviewers who can replay the sound, look at the direction of sensor participation, and analyze the audio waveform, the ShotSpotter system is highly accurate at distinguishing gunfire from other bangs, booms, and pops.

It is erroneous to assume that the failure to find physical evidence at a ShotSpotter alert location means that an alert was “inaccurate.” Many gunfire incidents, particularly in urban environments, may not leave physical recoverable evidence that first responders can locate and recover. For example, shooters may remove shell casings, police may arrive after a scene has cleared, the gunfire may occur in an area where physical evidence is obscured, or the shooter may have used a revolver, which, unlike a semi-automatic weapon, does not eject casings.

Nevertheless, ShotSpotter has been shown to improve evidence collection by responding officers to shooting incidents. For example, according to the Urban Institute, police departments using ShotSpotter have a rate of finding shell casings that is up to three times higher due to the precise location provided by ShotSpotter alerts. Shell casings are critical evidence in an investigation that can be used to identify the gun that was fired, and ultimately identify and prosecute a suspect.

As ShotSpotter already maintains a high accuracy rate, we are also able to maintain an extremely low false positive rate, at just 0.5% across all customers in the last four years, according to independent analytics firm Edgeworth Analytics. ShotSpotter's accuracy allows police to coordinate safe and efficient responses that require fewer resources in a way that improves community trust.

To the contrary, ShotSpotter has been shown to significantly decrease response times in coverage areas across the county.

• According to a 2019 article in The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, ShotSpotter alerts decrease police and EMS response times by more than 30%, getting first responders to the scene to identify and assist gunshot victims who may otherwise not receive life-saving help.
• Eric Piza, PhD, a researcher from Northeastern University who studied ShotSpotter technology in Kansas City, found that the system detected gunfire a median of 93 seconds before the first 911 call reporting the same incident.

There is no evidence to support this claim.

Critics have raised concerns that ShotSpotter contributes to over-policing, particularly in black and brown neighborhoods. But customers themselves – not SoundThinking – decide where to deploy ShotSpotter based on objective historical data. Gun violence does not affect every community the same way. Areas that experience higher rates of gun violence receive priority. That only makes sense because that is where victimization occurs. An unfortunate reality is that places that suffer the most are often Black and brown neighborhoods. Critics would deny these neighborhoods—and the good people that live in them—a crucial tool to help respond to chronic gun violence.

ShotSpotter’s mission is to address gun violence where it happens, regardless of demographics. Ignoring gunfire in these areas would only perpetuate inequities, not resolve them.

The notion that addressing gun violence requires choosing between technology tools and violence interruption and prevention is an alarming misconception. You need both.

Cities need ShotSpotter to know when and where criminal gunfire occurs so first responders can react quickly and render aid to victims as needed and save lives.

Further, investment in violence interruption is also recommended.

SoundThinking's Data for Good Program, for example, helps law enforcement customers identify offices of violence prevention, schools, city and county public health departments and other community organizations that would receive gunfire data and analytics including heatmaps and dashboards. These tools indicate where gunfire and potential trauma may be occurring so the appropriate community resources can be deployed to offer immediate and lasting support and help address the core issues that drive crime.

Cities and community organizations that utilize SoundThinking technology and data to help prevent violence and deploy social, health and economic resources to their communities include:

• Miami-Dade County's Walking One Stop;
• City of Springfield, IL; and
• Baltimore's Office of Neighborhood Safety.

There is no evidence to support this claim.

ShotSpotter provides intelligence that allows police to coordinate safe, efficient, and equitable responses that require fewer resources in a way that builds community trust.

When gunfire occurs, is it not preferable to ensure law enforcement and first responders know about it and can respond quickly to render aid to victims and secure the area?

When ShotSpotter alerts police to gunfire, officers are given more information and context about the incident than they would have without ShotSpotter. This information allows for a safer and more equitable response.

Lastly, ShotSpotter alerts allow police to respond to and investigate a gunfire incident in a more precise geographical area, compared to a 911 call (when they do occur) that often requires officers to patrol much more broadly for victims and evidence.

Without the intelligence from ShotSpotter, the unfortunate reality is that many gunshot-wound victims do not receive the immediate aid that could save their lives. But even more fundamentally, it means residents in these communities are victimized twice. They are first victimized by persistent exposure to gun violence, denying them their fundamental right to live without fear of harm. We have all heard the tragic stories of caregivers putting their kids to sleep in the bathtub for fear of gun violence. Pediatric research also shows the damaging effect on children and adolescents exposed to continual community gunfire that somehow has become "normalized." This ongoing trauma is often accompanied by lifelong emotional, learning, and physical consequences.

Those same residents are then victimized again when first responders, unaware of gunfire events, fail to arrive. This lack of response further strains the already fissured relationship between police and the community, fueling perceptions that law enforcement simply does not care for the communities they, in theory, have sworn to serve and protect. Such benign neglect, though not malicious, causes tangible harm. ShotSpotter counters this by ensuring police are alerted and can respond accurately, thereby building trust and affirming a commitment to community safety.

Absolutely not. This is a patently false claim.

The rebranding of the company was driven by the extension of other products and services beyond ShotSpotter.

The ShotSpotter system is designed to detect when, where and how many (rounds) of gunshots. Importantly, the gunshot alerts do not by design have the ability to discern anything about the who (identity) of the shooter.

ShotSpotter in no way records conversations. An independent audit conducted by the New York University Policing Project concluded that the risk of voice surveillance is extremely limited and ShotSpotter received unanimous approval from the San Francisco Privacy Commission. Here is their report. An ACLU investigation concurred.

Over the years, ShotSpotter has implemented numerous technical and process improvements to further minimize the chance for a human voice to be captured in the system and there is no direct access to extended audio pre- and post-incident by any parties.

Not true. SoundThinking's Incident Review Center Reviewers are acoustic specialists who have successfully completed a two-month-long certification training, requiring each to detect gunfire with 99% accuracy. SoundThinking regularly monitors its employees' performance and provides additional training when needed.

False. ShotSpotter is a tool for Constitutional policing. It enhances public safety by alerting police to shooting incidents, providing them with a valuable starting point for investigations.

The alerts do not authorize officers to randomly detain or search individuals; rather, they offer real-time data—such as the location and timing of detected gunfire—that can help establish reasonable suspicion, a well-defined legal standard. Police must still adhere to the Fourth Amendment, requiring specific, articulable facts to justify any investigative detention or pat-down for weapons.

Our system does not replace officer discretion or bypass constitutional safeguards; it simply equips law enforcement with timely information to respond more effectively. Each agency using this technology remains bound by its own training, policies, and by the Constitution.

Absolutely false. ShotSpotter forensic data has been used as evidence in over 300 court cases in 24 states and has prevailed in dozens of Frye and Daubert challenges. The data provides precise details as to where, when, and how the shooting occurred and is utilized by both prosecutorial and defense teams to gain a better understanding of key events that are critical to the pursuit of justice.

For example, a federal judge in Mobile, Alabama sided with prosecutors in a 2023 case involving the use of ShotSpotter technology, upholding the arrest of a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.