For the past three years, an unidentifiable amount of security cameras equipped to detect the sounds of gunfire have given Cleveland police slightly increased response times to shooting incidents but draw high-priority action, draining resources away from other calls, and don’t aid in collecting evidence or solving crimes.
That was the top-level takeaway from a report from Cleveland State University researchers commissioned by the city as City Hall and Cleveland City Council debate the merits of a $3.2 million, three-year contract with ShotSpotter and the possibility of switching to Flock.
Last Friday, members of City Council’s Public Safety Committee wrestled with a handful of pros and cons tied to the current technology, paid for with American Rescue Plan Act dollars, and weighed the Bibb adminsitration’s proposal to pivot to Flock, which it says is the only vendor that could do sound detection, video and license plate readers. (The city already has a contract with Flock for that last function.)
The city’s contract with SoundThinking, the California-based company that’s deployed ShotSpotter devices in about 175 cities throughout the U.S., is up in April.
Local activists would prefer neither.
“This particular technology is just going to send more cops into neighborhoods that have already been terrorized by the police,” Bryn Adams, an activist with Flock No, told Scene. “My personal perspective is I would rather the City of Cleveland not engage with Flock at all.”
Adams and others formed Flock No as a people’s push to try and lean City Council away from another contract with another gunshot detection system. Such systems are intrusive on neighbors, critics say; they strain already-strained police departments; and they bring to the fore questions of privacy violations—what data is being collected, and where exactly it’s going.
Though federal lawsuits alleging privacy violations have been filed against Flock—in Norfolk, Virginia, and Washington state, to name two—the company has yet to be successfully sued for infringment. In September, a probe into Flock unveiled that data from Flock’s license plate readers around Illinois was being shared with ICE agents. In response, Evanston and Oak Park nixed their contracts.
At Friday’s meeting, which included the CSU researchers, reps from both Flock and ShotSpotter, the debate between Council and Public Safety Chief Wayne Drummond seemed to suggest that Flock could be ShotSpotter’s replacement in the spring.
After all, Cleveland had installed another indeterminable amount of Flock’s license plate readers across the city—about 340, according to a citizen’s map.
Drummond himself seemed bolstered by what he’d heard about Flock, along with details from the study on Cleveland’s experience with ShotSpotter that, he said, showed the benefits of gunshot detection systems.
ShotSpotter, the researchers found, is “mostly reliable” for identifying gunshot sounds (21 errors, they counted, in one year); its alerts, almost obviously, create more work for police; but those alerts are needed despite the efficacy of 911. (“Without some type of gun detection technology, police would likely not know about 90 percent of the shots fired,” the report concluded.)
“ShotSpotter does not directly reduce crime,” Drummond said at the meeting, paraphrasing the report. “It is an after-the-fact technology.”
But it is an important tool to help police and first responders deliver life-saving aid, he said, as the study found ShotSpotter detected gunshots about four minutes before 911 calls came in for dozens of incidents in which the victim received first-aid treament.
“For me, just having the ability for our officers to receive those alerts, to respond to those areas and to do life-saving measures on those people, in my very humble opinion, is worth the investment that we’ve invested in the gunshot detection technology,” Drummond said.
In her own summary to Council, Stephanie Kent, one of the researchers at CSU who produced the report, framed the technology as no end-all-be-all for prosecuting or even deterring violent crime in Cleveland.
“We find ShotSpotter to be a supplemental but not an essential tool,” she told Council. “It does occasionally aid investigations, but it is rarely the sole source leading to any arrest or life-saving intervention.”
No one at Friday’s meeting could pinpoint any sure violations of the Fourth Amendment tied to either Flock or ShotSpotter.
But that didn’t calm concerns. Councilpersons Charles Slife, Stephanie Howse-Jones and Rebecca Maurer all questioned Flock’s team or the Public Safety reps present on what, if any, privacy violations come with continuing to pay millions to keep those cameras running.
Three million dollars that, in Howse-Jones’ mind, might be better spent propping up mental health programs or boosting the careers of violence interrupters.
“People believe they’re being they’re being over-surveilled,” she said. “They only believe what they feel.”
Maurer, who referenced her past legal work in New York City, saw both sides: more cameras may be what Clevelanders want despite concerns for privacy.
“I am personally opposed to a surveillance state,” she said. “But from my experience, talking to people? They’re desparate for something that will impact their lives on a day-to-day basis.”
Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter