Today marks a milestone of which we are all here at ShotSpotter justifiably, I think, proud.

This morning we announced the acquisition of the SECURES^® product line and technology from the QinetiQ North America (QNA) Technology Solutions Group company Planning Systems Inc. (PSI).  We’ve had the pleasure of knowing SECURES and PSI (alright, alright, competing against them :-)) for nearly a decade. Along with our ShotSpotter Gunshot Location System®, their product is the only other product of this kind ever to have been formally evaluated by the National Institute of Justice, and until this morning we were the only two companies offering products which triangulate the location of gunfire in complex urban environments.  (Now, of course, there’s only one.)

Current economic conditions have made it increasingly clear not only that we would build a better and more valuable business by combining our two approaches and intellectual property, but also that demonstrating our strength and staying power as a private company by having the assets to acquire a product from a strong public company would give further assurance to our customer base that we are a company they can count on.  After all, ShotSpotter’s customers rely on us to be around when they need us.  (We are, for example, being called to testify in a criminal case dating back to 2004 just this week.)  So to some extent, this milestone proves our commitment to remaining the most reliable, most experienced provider of wide area acoustic sensing technology both to public safety and to the military.  We’re here for the long haul.

With SECURES as part of our offerings, we also gain additional points of differentiation.  The physical security world has suffered for a long time from “camera explosion syndrome”-an exploding number of video surveillance cameras and not enough people to watch them.  Moreover, having people watching cameras 24/7 can raise all manner  of privacy and civil liberties concerns.  We see the combination of video surveillance and wide area acoustic surveillance as an important step toward addressing both problems:  stay tuned in the coming days for announcements about the new, combined offerings of video surveillance cameras triggered or  ”cued” by acoustic surveillance which we will be offering as a result of this acquisition.  By using acoustic sensing to “cue” cameras, customers can eliminate the workload and greatly alleviate privacy concerns (since our sensors only trigger on gunfire, not other sounds, such as human speech, they can “turn on” cameras only at critical moments).

A big day for ShotSpotter.  I’m honored to be a part of a growing team and to know that what we do every day makes a difference in the lives of people across the US-over 750,000 at last count, and growing daily.

James G. Beldock
President & CEO