ShotSpotter Keeps Listening After Contracts Expire
W hen mayor Brandon Johnson announced in February that Chicago would stop using the gunshot-detection system known as ShotSpotter by year’s end, local activists were elated.
Ever since 2021, when the police fatally shot thirteen-year-old Adam Toledo while responding to a ShotSpotter alert, the Stop ShotSpotter Campaign has been pressuring the city to ditch the technology. Johnson’s decision not to renew the Windy City’s contract with ShotSpotter was seen as the culmination of the campaign’s efforts.
But ending the contract may not be enough to remove the company’s more than 2,500 sensors from neighborhoods on the city’s South and West Sides, where they’re disproportionately located. Internal emails reviewed by South Side Weekly and WIRED suggest ShotSpotter keeps its sensors online and, in some instances, provides gunshot detection alerts to police departments in cities where its contracts have expired or been canceled. The emails raise new questions about whether the sensors in Chicago will be turned off and removed, regardless of Johnson’s decision.
“We continue to focus on serving the City of Chicago with our critical gunshot detection technology service during our contractual term,” a ShotSpotter spokesperson wrote in a statement. “Nothing has changed regarding our singular purpose to close the public safety gap by enabling law enforcement agencies globally to more efficiently and effectively respond to incidents of criminal gunfire…where gunshot wound victim’s lives are in the balance.”
