A Portland police oversight group on Monday urged the city to adopt controversial ShotSpotter technology that would acoustically track and quickly alert officers to gunshots in Portland as long as the city puts controls in place.
The city also should consider working to identify people who are most at risk of firing on others by compiling something akin to the “Violent Impact Player” list kept by police in Tampa, Fla., the group recommended in a 61-page report. The list could help police identify and arrest “serial trigger pullers” to help reduce ongoing violence, the report said.
The group submitted its recommendations to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office after two of its members earlier this year traveled with Portland police to Tampa, which uses ShotSpotter technology.
The citizen group, formed last year to monitor Portland’s new police gun violence team, also researched the technology and its use elsewhere and invited three outside criminal justice experts to review its recommendations.
The gun detection technology can help police focus gun violence enforcement and improve police legitimacy by helping officers respond to shootings in neighborhoods where people are reluctant to call 911, according to the group’s report.
But the group members noted it’s only one strategy to combat violence.
“Gun violence continues to be a major threat to livability and safety issues in the city of Portland and has reached the level of being a public health crisis,” the report said. “Gunshot detection by itself is not a panacea for gun violence, but if used as part of a comprehensive gun crime response strategy, it can contribute to a reduction.”
Whether to pursue the technology in Portland will be up to the City Council.
ShotSpotter officials, during video-based presentations last week and in the past seven months to city officials and residents, have said the real-time gunfire alerts allow patrol officers to respond quickly to a precise shooting location and help victims, identify witnesses, collect forensic evidence and go after suspects sooner.
“We’re talking about precision policing, identifying just a small percentage of the population around you that’s causing all this violence,” said Ron Teachman, ShotSpotter’s director of public safety solutions who previously worked as police chief in South Bend, Indiana, and New Bedford, Mass.
ShotSpotter’s chief executive Ralph Clark told the community oversight group late last year that 80% to 90% of shootings go unreported. He said the technology can show residents in some of the city’s most vulnerable communities that “their public safety matters, too.”
“When a gun is fired and there’s no call to 911, it means no police response and no police response means missed opportunities,” Clark said. “Those missed opportunities include the missed opportunity of collecting evidence, interviewing witnesses, attending to gunshot wound victims and potentially saving lives.”
ShotSpotter currently has sensors placed in more than 100 cities in the United States that detect, locate, analyze and alert police of gunshots within seconds.
Even before the recommendation was made public Monday, the proposal elicited privacy concerns and criticism that it would draw more police to lower-income neighborhoods and lead to over-policing.
Some have questioned the accuracy of the audio surveillance.
Others have asked how the identification of additional shootings would make a difference when the Portland Police Bureau is facing significant staffing shortages and already unable to fully investigate every shooting.
Nathan Castle, a Portland resident listening to one of the community presentations, asked if ShotSpotter will go in primarily minority neighborhoods.
“From an equity/PR perspective, it is challenging. …The SW hills may never get a shooting, but if NE Portland is under ShotSpotter and SW isn’t, that is going to look problematic and generate pushback,” he wrote in a public chat.
Money from the American Rescue Plan Act, federal aid awarded to state and local governments to combat the economic downturn and the Covid-19 crisis, could cover the cost of the technology – ranging from $70,000 to $ 95,000 per square mile of coverage, according to Capt. James Crooker, who has helped research the technology as the former head of the Focused Intervention Team. He’s now Central Precinct’s captain.
If the city identified 10 square miles, it would cost between $700,000 to $950,000 a year.
The report urges the city use federal grants or other funds to pay for the technology, and not use funds set aside for community-based violence prevention programs. The oversight group “does not believe we must sacrifice community-based interventions in the name of responsive policing. We can and should have both,” its report said.
The “Violent Impact Player” list also has drawn criticism, with some questioning why the Police Bureau would make a list of targeted people in the wake of scrapping its gang designation list. But the U.S. Justice Department has supported other cities’ identification of prolific offenders through the use of objective scoring criteria.
The recommendations follow a violent weekend with four killings since Friday night, pushing the city’s homicide count this year to 51. Last year, the city saw a record 92 killings.
In Portland in the past year, more than 150 bullets were fired at one scene where only one person called 911, Crooker said. “There are shootings that no one is calling about,” he said.
The Community Oversight Group monitors the Police Bureau’s Focused Intervention Team of 12 officers and two sergeants. It started early this year and is tasked with working to remove guns from the street and help curb the violence.
The group has recommended the city conduct a pilot project to test the ShotSpotter technology and adopt a list of controls to ensure it does not result in unintended consequences.
Among the controls suggested are: the collection of comprehensive data to analyze gunfire trends, police response times, accuracy of the gunfire notifications and whether more arrests occur; ensuring the sensors are placed equitably and reflect accurate shooting statistics in the Portland metro area; ongoing implicit bias training for police officers who respond to the gunfire notifications; and the drafting of investigative guidelines and limitations for the use of ShotSpotter data in criminal prosecutions.
HOW SHOTSPOTTER WORKS
ShotSpotter puts acoustic sensors on rooftops of private buildings, on utility poles, street lights and sometimes government buildings.
ShotSpotter puts acoustic sensors on rooftops of private buildings, on utility poles, street lights and sometimes government buildings.
The city would determine where to place them. The oversight group has recommended gun violence hotspots as the primary reason for making that decision.
Other cities examine crime data and often set up the sensors in neighborhoods that have had the most gunfire based on homicides, nonfatal shootings or other gun-related crimes.
Once the sensors are placed, the technology company marks the location. The technology uses two primary algorithms in the real-time analysis of sounds.
One algorithm determines the location of “pops, booms, and bangs.” It uses the speed of the sound and the times when the sound reaches different sensors.
The second algorithm allows a machine to filter out similar sounds that aren’t gunshots such as fireworks and helicopters.
Human reviewers then filter out any extraneous noise before determining the audio picked up a gunshot and alerting police.
That process takes an average of 45 to 60 seconds, said Teachman, the ShotSpotter representative.
The alert would be sent simultaneously to the 911 emergency dispatch center and out to officers in the field via their mobile laptops or even cellphone.
The alert also would provide the nearest street address of the gunshot or multiple shots, with a timestamp and indicate if it’s likely more than one shooter involved, distinguishing if a high-capacity or fully automatic gun was fired, Teachman said.
Emergency calls that come in from residents who hear shots are usually an average of about 780 feet away from the crime scene, and police often spend time trying to locate the actual spot of the shooting, Teachman said.
‘NO-SNITCH CODE’
Lionel Irving, a member of the oversight group, asked ShotSpotter officials if the technology picks up people’s conversations.
“We are not in the business of capturing, monitoring conversations. We don’t share any conversations with the police. We are eliminating all those voices,” Teachman said. “That’s what computer filter does. So we’re only sending gunshots and the sound of gunfire to the police.”
Irving later said he believes that “precision policing” described by ShotSpotter officials would be helpful “to build trust back in the community.” Irving describes himself as a “gang veteran,”– a former gang member who started the nonprofits Men Building Men and Love is Stronger after serving nearly 15 years in prison for cocaine distribution and fatally shooting an unintended target, a 14-year-old boy, in Tacoma in 1991.
Portland police Lt. Ken Duilio, a supervisor of the Focused Intervention Team, said he believes the technology would help police investigate shootings.
“These cases are super hard, super hard to make, right? There’s a culture of a no-snitch code,” Duilio said, during one of the community oversight group’s meetings. “Witnesses and victims don’t cooperate. … And so people are like, ‘Police, what are you doing?’
“The solve rate is usually pretty low, especially around the gang community,” he said. “What ShotSpotter could potentially provide is we might catch more people in the act.”
Yet Duilio said if there’s no community buy-in for the technology, the effort won’t be successful.
Officer Spencer Perry of the Focused Intervention Team said the gunfire detection system doesn’t say who fired a shot but gives police information about where a shooting occurred.
“It’s good unbiased information of what’s happening,” he said. “It allows us to respond and assess the situation from there.’’
ACCURACY DEBATED
The accuracy of ShotSpotter remains a hotly debated topic, with civil rights advocates questioning whether it helps reduce crime and the ShotSpotter company boasting decreases in homicides and violent crime for many of its customers.
In July 2019, New York University Law School’s Policing Project audited ShotSpotter’s gunshot detection technology to examine potential invasions of privacy.
The Policing Project is a nonprofit in the law school that says it works with cities and police to promote public safety through transparency and equity.
It determined that ShotSpotter’s sensors “present relatively limited privacy risks.” But the reviewers found there was a small possibility that the technology “could capture voices of individuals near the sensors, and conceivably could be used for deliberate voice surveillance.”
At the Policing Project’s recommendation, ShotSpotter agreed to reduce the audio stored on its sensors, commit to denying requests and subpoenas for audio data, not share sensor locations and improve controls and supervision regarding audio access.
“Each community has its unique laws, concerns, and history, and the Policing Project believes that every community should decide for itself what policing technologies are appropriate for their specific needs,” the Policing Project’s report said.
In 2021, the U.S. Conference of Mayors recognized the use of the ShotSpotter system in West Palm Beach, Florida, as a “best practice” for enabling quick emergency response times.
Yet the American Civil Liberties Union last year cited concerns about ShotSpotter producing false alarms and sending police into neighborhoods for no reason on high alert expecting to potentially confront a dangerous situation.
It cited a report by Chicago’s inspector general that found the frequency of ShotSpotter alerts in some of Chicago’s neighborhoods led police to make more stops and pat-downs of residents.
A review of Chicago’s use of ShotSpotter found that in over 90% of cases where officers responded to an alert, no gun evidence was located.
An investigation by The Associated Press in March found the system can miss gunfire, misclassify the sounds of fireworks or cars backfiring as shots and can be used in court to mistakenly link someone to a crime.
ShotSpotter responded that its technology is accurate and has been successfully admitted in more than 200 court cases nationwide.
VIOLENT IMPACT PLAYER
Tampa police not only use ShotSpotter, they have a list of what they call “violent impact players” – people ranked on a point system.
The criteria include prior gun-related arrests or prior violent offenses in an 18-month period, probation or a prison term in the previous three years and being a suspect or a victim of violence. Tampa police also add points if someone is a gang member or associate but Portland police can’t do that.
A study of Tampa police found that the list helped reduce violent crime by 25 % and gun crime by about 24% during a six-year period, from 2013 to 2018, three criminologists wrote in the Journal of Experimental Criminology. The criminologists noted that the identification of prolific offenders through an objective scoring process is endorsed by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Portland oversight group is clear that the city, in creating criteria for such a list, rely on “strict criminal safety/threat risk assessments determined by known criminal history and documented patterns of gun violence,” and be on the lookout for how it could create inequities that may disadvantage certain people, its report said.
Seemab Hussaini, who founded the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Oregon, said he believes bringing back a list of people targeted by police will lead to racial profiling.
It doesn’t make sense to create a new list, he said, particularly after the Police Bureau in 2017 agreed to ban its list of designated gang members.
“How is this any different?” he asked.
Kimberley Dixon, a vice chair of the oversight group, replied that the group “is not here to do it the same way.”
In a May exchange during the oversight group’s meeting, Andre Miller, a member of Commissioner JoAnn Hardesty staff who said he was speaking as a Portland resident, said the city can’t solve gun violence without addressing the root causes.
“It is important to talk about the societal needs and structural violence that leads to behavioral violence,” he said. Police, the ShotSpotter technology and a list won’t stop or solve gun violence, he said.
Dixon responded, “Yes, Andre, root causes need to be addressed by those who do that. And we have to improve safety and reduce trauma.”
Castle, a local resident, said he believes such a list can be used to intervene with someone who is on a dangerous path and provide a chance to connect the person to services to prevent future violence.
Gina Ronning, a member of the oversight group who is involved in restorative justice, pointed out in one group meeting, “We’re not abolitionists. We’re willing to work with police to identify strategies that help.”
Ronning said she concluded that data-driven approaches including gunfire detection technology will help reduce random police stops.
Pastor Ed Williams, who chairs the oversight group and is active at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church in North Portland, said he was horrified to return to Portland after a visit to Tampa in spring and learn of four shootings here in 11 hours.
“If we think we’re going to solve this problem by continuing to do the same things that we’re already doing,” Williams said, “we’re fooling ourselves.”
He stressed that each member of the oversight group represents a segment of the city and noted that each commissioner had a chance to name people to sit on the committee. Commissioner JoAnn Hardesty, who had a chance to nominate three people to sit on the oversight committee, chose not to do so, he said.
Hardesty said she has concerns about ShotSpotter, including how the Police Bureau would improve its response times to shootings with more gunshots detected and what metrics would be used to decide which neighborhoods would have sensors installed. “I am happy to consider a pilot of this technology, but without a sound plan in place I am concerned this will be a tool for surveilling and over-policing low income neighborhoods and communities of color that does nothing to actually reduce gun violence,” Hardesty said in a statement.
With record vacancies in the Police Bureau, shooters in the city have a “green light” to settle disputes with guns, Williams said.
“I believe this focused deterrence approach has a lot of promise to it,” he said. “Will we have the courage to do something different? … Time is not on our side.”
— Maxine Bernstein
Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian
