Shots Fired, Shots Detected
A new high-tech system helps New Haven Police fight gun violence, but there are no plans to install the system in Hartford or Bridgeport
Fairfield Weekly
By Daniel D'Ambrosio
December 17, 2009
It didn't take long for ShotSpotter to pay off for New Haven Police. The high-tech gunshot-detection system developed in the early 1990s relies on a network of acoustic sensors the size and shape of coffee cans to "hear" shots and notify police of their location within seconds.
Officer Joe Avery, police spokesman, says that just days after installing 25 sensors in the gun-happy Newhallville and Dixwell neighborhoods in September, ShotSpotter flashed the location of shots fired at a Popeye's Chicken on the dispatcher's screen at police headquarters.
New Haven Police responded quickly to the scene — about five minutes faster than usual, thanks to ShotSpotter, says Avery — where they found shell casings but no victim. The 24-year-old man, shot in the stomach, had already been rushed to the hospital by a friend, and survived. No one in the neighborhood called the shooting in to 911.
"The whole point here is if the guy had been laying there, we got no calls. And if he was wounded to the point he couldn't leave or couldn't go in the car he could have died," Avery said.
About a month later, New Haven cops literally caught a woman with a smoking gun in her hands, thanks to ShotSpotter. The sensors registered a volley of shots on County Street, where officers responded to find 32-year-old Jennifer Burridge nearby, holding a .40-caliber Smith and Wesson. She was high on a hallucinogenic drug, firing at random.
Neither Hartford nor Bridgeport police have the ShotSpotter system. Bridgeport Police Chief Joseph L. Gaudett says ShotSpotter is "on the wish list" for his department, but the city can't afford it right now. Neither can Hartford, according to Police Department spokeswoman Nancy Mulroy. "We've been approached by vendors, but money is tight," said Mulroy.
Hartford Police reported 164 shooting "incidents" through Dec. 5 this year, while New Haven Police reported 144 nonfatal shootings through the same time period. Bridgeport Police report 71 shootings so far this year, which includes both fatal and nonfatal shootings. A recent gun buy-back program in Hartford in which participants received gift certificates for $25, $50 or $75 depending on the weapon, yielded 78 firearms and "numerous" rounds of ammunition.
New Haven Police secured a $350,000 federal grant to install the ShotSpotter system covering an area of about 1.5 square miles in that city. Avery says before installing the system, New Haven cops visited their colleagues in Springfield, Mass., where ShotSpotter has been in place since 2007, to pick their brains.
"We've had a tremendous amount of success with [ShotSpotter]," said Sgt. John Delaney, executive aide to Springfield's police commissioner.
There was the recent home invasion, for example, in which a couple was tied up with electrical cord by two men who ransacked their house. The duo lingered at the house for awhile before finally leaving. That's when things got crazy.
"The guy [who had been tied up] broke loose and charged out of the house after them, taking the law into his own hands," said Delaney. "During the chase one of the perpetrators took out a handgun and shot it in the direction of the guy chasing them."
ShotSpotter picked up on the gunshot and police surrounded the area within five minutes, according to Delaney. The suspects were charged with kidnapping, home invasion, assault and intent to murder.
"They ripped the phones out of the house and took the victims' cell phones so they couldn't call the police," said Delaney. "The only way we knew what was happening was because of the shots fired. We never would have gotten them. They would have gotten away or some other tragedy would have ensued."
Springfield spent about $1 million on its ShotSpotter system, which covers roughly three square miles of the city's roughest neighborhoods, and budgets about $90,000 yearly to maintain the system. Many of the police cruisers are equipped with on-board computers that make it even more efficient to use the ShotSpotter system by bringing shots fired up on screens in the officers' cars.
"If you get one gun off the street, that's worth a million dollars right there," said Delaney. "This year alone, since January, we've recovered 20 guns solely because of ShotSpotter."
Delaney says Springfield police would like to double the size of their system to cover 95 percent of the most notorious areas in the city for gun violence. But it costs about $200,000 for each additional square mile of coverage, money the department doesn't have to spend.
There are 46 cities and counties in the United States with ShotSpotter systems, including Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles. The U.S. military uses the system to help "track their own forces and locate enemies in real time," according to the company's Web site.
In 1997, the National Institute of Justice did an independent test of ShotSpotter and found it "accurately detected 80 percent of test fire incidents inside the one square-mile coverage area to within 40 feet." The detection system provides precise latitude and longitude for every shot it picks up, as well as a street address.
Delaney says dispatchers can hear the shots in real time, and can direct officers to the front or back of a house. In one case, he said, the ability of ShotSpotter to pinpoint the actual location where shots are fired led Springfield police to a store operating as a front for selling drugs, even though the victim of the shooting crashed his car a block and a half away from the store after dying from his wounds.
"If ShotSpotter didn't pinpoint the exact spot of the shooting we never would have tied it to the drug house," said Delaney.
The company, cognizant of concerns some may have about Big Brother listening in on their conversations, is careful to point out that their system does not pick up the sound of voices, and is activated only by gunshots, although Delaney concedes there are occasionally false "hits" from firecrackers or nail guns on construction sites.
"Typical human speech is unintelligible at distances greater than 20 feet away from our acoustic sensors," explains the ShotSpotter Web site. "In addition, sensor locations are specifically chosen to avoid the possibility of individuals being overheard. Typical locations include rooftops, telephone poles or in other restricted-access locations."
The Connecticut chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union confirmed that as of now, ShotSpotter is not something they're concerned about.
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ShotSpotter contact |
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Erin Lopez |
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