Columbia PD Makes 39 Arrests, Confiscates 49 Guns in First Six Months of Program

Columbia, SC had double the national average of violent crime, and the city has struggled with an illegal gun issue. The community was desensitized to gun violence and was not calling in gunfire incidents to police on a regular basis.

In the first six months after installing SoundThinking’s ShotSpotter gunshot detection system in April 2019, police received 778 alerts that resulted in 205 separate crime scenes within an area of the city where 75% of gunshots went unreported. Columbia PD estimated officers responded to 150 scenes during that time that they would not have visited without ShotSpotter, resulting in 39 arrests and 49 guns confiscated.

The ability of Columbia PD to respond to more gunshot scenes faster enables officers to collect better ballistic evidence that can help solve crimes as part of the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN). For example, an illegal gun acquired by an ATF agent during a sting operation in 2020 matched the ballistics of two separate firearm shootings that police responded to in 2019 based on ShotSpotter alerts. That helped investigators build a case after the gun was reported stolen.