Sniper Detectors Coming to America's Heartland

[KRonn]

Sniper Detectors Coming to America's Heartland


Gunshots ring out in the dead of night, and not a single person reports it. Yet police know exactly where the shots came from, even before they arrive on the scene.

It sounds like a scene from The Minority Report, but it's real. A new technology called ShotSpotter enables law enforcement officials to precisely and instantaneously locate shooters, and it has been quietly rolling out across America. From Long Island, N.Y., to San Francisco, Calif., more than 60 cities in the U.S. have been leveraging ShotSpotter to make their streets safer.

Technology to precisely and instantaneously locate shooters -- called ShotSpotter -- has been quietly rolled out across America.

Minneapolis has already adopted it. And this past week three more cities from the heartland -- Flint, Mich.; Youngstown, Ohio; and Omaha, Neb. -- have begun testing or furthered plans to roll it out.

The Youngstown Police Department decided to go very public by posting frank warning signs, such as this one at the Youngstown Elementary School:

"If You Fire a Gun, We Will Find You."

ShotSpotter relies on wide-area acoustic surveillance and GPS technology to triangulate the source of gunshots. Sensors are fixed to buildings and poles to provide coverage over a fixed area. With audio-analysis software, it can identify whether a shooter is stationary or moving -- meaning police officers can be equipped with information on the speed and direction of, say, a vehicle from which a shot was fired.

It can also "hear" the acoustic signature and distinguish between calibers and types of firearms. Similarly, it can hear different explosions and classify them, from vehicle backfires to fireworks to bombs.

The ShotSpotter Gunfire Alert system then relays the location and data to the police or a dispatch computer within moments, enabling a more rapid response time for both police and first responders.

The best part: ShotSpotter works. It's accurate to 10 to 15 feet, and some police departments are reporting accuracy to within five feet. In Long Island's Nassau County, gun violence was reduced by a whopping 90 percent at the close of this year's first quarter.

Other countries, including Brazil, have jumped on the ShotSpotter bandwagon. In preparation for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, Brazil conducted its first live-fire calibration tests this month, using more than 70 hidden sensors in urban areas.

But technology this effective doesn't come cheap. The subscription-based implementation called ShotSpotter Flex costs as much as $60,000 per square mile. Rocky Mount, N.C., uses it monitor a large portion of the city. The Omaha, Neb., police department, which began live-fire testing last week, solved the cost challenge with a grant from the Justice Department.

In many U.S. cities, only a small fraction of gunshots are reported. With this system, created by the 15-year-old Mountain View, Calif., technology firm SST, Inc, police and first responders don't have to rely on citizen reports. Indeed, the time this technology saves can save a life.

The system also lets police identify patterns of gun violence over time. For example, if the system regularly ties a specific house to gunfire, it may flag it as a source of problems. And ShotSpotter can improve criminal forensics, helping boost a prosecutor's case.

Such gunshot-detection systems began to make headway in the '90s, but false positives have been an ongoing problem. ShotSpotter can be taught sounds and can learn from its mistakes, setting it apart from the pack.

The company also offers a separate gunshot screener product for dispatch centers that improves the rate of accuracy and reduces false positives. The system can transmit a sound to a call center, where acoustics experts can examine the waveform and tell within moments whether it came from a firearm or a firecracker.

Unlike a lot of other wide-area surveillance systems on the market, ShotSpotter doesn't require a clear line of sight and provides much farther range of coverage around a single sensor -- up to approximately one mile unhindered.

ShotSpotting could advance to incorporate surveillance video, so that as a shot is heard and pinpointed, video could document the shooter -- making it easier to identify a suspect and faster to make an arrest. Some police departments have been looking at using Avrio RMS cameras that react to gunfire by spinning toward its source.

Also in the pipeline, SST is developing a wearable gunshot detection system built into a vest, including acoustic sensors, integrated GPS and display.

When gun-wielding miscreants get the message that not only will they be immediately detected but also instantaneously located, shooting that firearm should become a whole lot less appealing

[Strix]

Rochester has had it for a very long time now, and it doesn't do much beyond letting law enforcement know that a shot was fired. They show up, find some shells, and if they get lucky the idiots are still standing there with a smoking gun.

[Admiral Yi]

I wonder if this was the secret weapon we used in Iraq that Bob Woodward declined to describe.

[Alcibiades]

We never used it over there.


The 'secret weapon' probably had a lot more to do with intercepting cell phone calls and using their signal to follow them and raid their houses.

Spent a lot of nights driving around waiting for some bad guy to use a phone.

[Admiral Yi]

We never used it over there.


The 'secret weapon' probably had a lot more to do with intercepting cell phone calls and using their signal to follow them and raid their houses.

Spent a lot of nights driving around waiting for some bad guy to use a phone.

Sort of like the BBC.

[Syt]

That was my job during military service. Though we were trying to detect bigger guns. Like howitzers. And our microphones were mobile which required careful surveying of the coordinates in those whacky pre-GPS days.

[Razgovory]

I wonder if this was the secret weapon we used in Iraq that Bob Woodward declined to describe.

I wouldn't think it would be to useful there.  People are shooting at each other all the time.  Trying distinguish where one shot came from out of thousands of shots all across the city would be difficult.

[dps]

I wonder if this was the secret weapon we used in Iraq that Bob Woodward declined to describe.

I wouldn't think it would be to useful there.   Trying distinguish where one shot came from out of thousands of shots all across the city would be difficult.

Heck, I question its usefulness in America for the same reason.

And why do the police have any business knowing exactly when and where a gun was fired anyway?  99.99% of the time, there's no criminal act involved.

[MadImmortalMan]

Sort of like the BBC.

And News of the World.

[Josquius]

Is it just me or is the article somehow presenting this as a bad thing?

[dps]

Is it just me or is the article somehow presenting this as a bad thing?

Must be you.  I think it's a bad thing, but the article seems to me to be saying it's a good thing.

[Tonitrus]

And why do the police have any business knowing exactly when and where a gun was fired anyway?  99.99% of the time, there's no criminal act involved.

Pretty sure that inside the limits of most towns, it almost certainly always is.  Even if it is just the act of discharging a weapon itself.

[garbon]

And why do the police have any business knowing exactly when and where a gun was fired anyway?  99.99% of the time, there's no criminal act involved.

I generally consider it a problem when people are shooting guns outside of buildings near me.

[Capetan Mihali]

Rochester has had it for a very long time now, and it doesn't do much beyond letting law enforcement know that a shot was fired. They show up, find some shells, and if they get lucky the idiots are still standing there with a smoking gun.

Yeah, I was wondering if the technology of running away has caught up with this super weapon.

[Josquius]

Is it just me or is the article somehow presenting this as a bad thing?

Must be you.  I think it's a bad thing, but the article seems to me to be saying it's a good thing.