A gunshot monitoring system has roughly quadrupled the volume of gunfire notifications in the East End neighborhoods it covers, speeding and refining how Pittsburgh police handle calls for shots fired, city officials said.
Only about 20 to 25 percent of ShotSpotter alerts for gunfire are accompanied by a 911 call reporting shots fired, Mayor Bill Peduto estimated Friday.
“We’ve saved numerous lives where we have arrived on the scene when somebody has been shot and there have been absolutely no 911 calls,” Mr. Peduto said.
The details emerged as city council weighs whether to expand Pittsburgh’s reliance on ShotSpotter, a system that uses microphones to detect gunshots, pinpoint their location within feet and immediately alert nearby police. An agreement worth up to $3.38 million would extend ShotSpotter’s coverage across about 18 square miles in the city — up from 3 square miles now — likely by year’s end, among related functions.
Since January 2015, ShotSpotter has detected 2,399 incidents of gunfire in the Zone 5 neighborhoods it spans, including 1,294 alerts for multiple gunshots, 843 for a single gunshot and 262 for possible gunshots, according to limited data provided to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette under an open-records request. Current coverage runs from East Hills to Garfield.
Zone 5 Cmdr. Jason Lando said the system allows his officers to respond more quickly and efficiently to reports of gunfire because ShotSpotter pinpoints the location within feet.
In June 2016, he said, ShotSpotter alerted that shots had been fired in the backyard of a house at 8125 Frankstown Ave. The officers responded and found a man at the house who had fired the shots.
The officers obtained a search warrant for the house, found a gun inside and also discovered an infant who was living in deplorable conditions and took the baby into protective custody, Cmdr. Lando said. None of that would have happened without ShotSpotter’s precise alert, he said.
Police crime analysts also use ShotSpotter data to help determine weekly what areas of Zone 5 are likely to experience crime — areas that are “hot spots” and demand extra police attention, Cmdr. Lando said.
In some ways, ShotSpotter also increases the danger to officers, Cmdr. Lando said.
“Officers are arriving very quickly and sometimes they’re arriving while gunfire is still going on,” he said. “But we know our job is to protect the public, and getting there quickly is a priority — we know that with the implementation of ShotSpotter there are some things we need to do to make sure our officers are safer.”
Robert Swartzwelder, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Fort Pitt Lodge No. 1, said it’s plausible ShotSpotter could increase officer-involved shootings, but it also helps officers know exactly what they’re walking into so they can be prepared to make rational decisions.
At least one officer-involved shooting has been linked to ShotSpotter so far this year. In January, officers responded to a ShotSpotter alert on Nimick Place and shot a man who they say was carrying a shotgun and pointed a handgun at police. The man survived.
Mr. Peduto said continual training will ensure that officers are ready to handle situations when they arrive quickly after a ShotSpotter alert.
“The opposite effect is, we arrive after they're gone and we only end up seeing [suspects] at the next incident,” he said. “It’s better to get them off the street now than to wait for another victim or another incident to occur. But I can definitely understand [Officer Swartzwelder’s] concern, and we’ll do everything that we can to make sure our officers stay safe.”
Officer Swartzwelder said ShotSpotter can also confirm officer statements after officer-involved shootings and other incidents.
“It adds independent corroboration,” he said.
But T. Rashad Byrdsong, founder and CEO at the Homewood-based Community Empowerment Association, a support organization for at-risk families, said it’s difficult for citizens to know how well ShotSpotter is working, or whether it corroborates anything, because police haven’t shared specific data with community members.
“The community hasn’t received any type of data with regard to whether it’s preventing gun violence in our community or not,” Mr. Byrdsong said. “The jury is still out as far as a lot of the community’s concerns.”
The city can’t disclose the most detailed ShotSpotter data because it’s not allowed to, according to a letter ShotSpotter sent Pittsburgh police in February during the open-records process. That data is the “sole and exclusive” property of ShotSpotter per a services agreement between the two entities, the letter said.
Mr. Peduto confirmed the city doesn’t own that level of information. Still, the agreement maintains city police access to the comprehensive data generated by ShotSpotter activations, including specific time stamps and locations.
“ShotSpotter only limits the export of detailed electronic data to outside entities such as research institutions or other agencies that would use the data for derivative products,” the company said in a statement.
It didn’t immediately explain a rationale Friday, although Mr. Peduto said the company considers the most nuanced information to be a “trade secret of what makes their product marketable.” He called it “the trade-off that every city agrees to when they enter into the contract.” More than 85 domestic cities use the technology, according to ShotSpotter.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette records request, filed under the Pennsylvania Right to Know Act, yielded inexact information from the city. While the newspaper sought the time and site of each ShotSpotter activation in Zone 5, the city supplied, via the company, the hour of each activation and a generalized location.
Expanded coverage would span nearly a third of the city, targeting hot-spot areas that together accounted for some 80.5 percent of Pittsburgh’s gunfire calls from January 2015 through mid-December 2017. The city would pay Newark, Calif.-based ShotSpotter Inc. up to $3.38 million over three years for the expansion, ongoing operations, gunshot monitoring and upkeep.
Council favored the arrangement in a preliminary voice vote last week, backing the idea unanimously after a presentation from the city Department of Public Safety. Mr. Peduto has signaled that he would finalize the measure.
Wendell Hissrich, the public safety director, said he believes ShotSpotter has helped lessen violence.
“We have solved crime. We have basically taken people off the streets that could potentially be doing crime today,” Mr. Hissrich said. “Is there any set data out there? I won't say that. My opinion — my personal opinion: Yes, it has [reduced violence], because we’ve taken guns off the street; we’ve made arrests; we’ve saved lives.”
And the multimillion-dollar price is well worth the benefit, he said.
“How much value do you put on a life that’s been saved?” Mr. Hissrich said.
Christopher Huffaker contributed. Shelly Bradbury: 412-263-1999, sbradbury@post-gazette.com or follow @ShellyBradbury on Twitter. Adam Smeltz: 412-263-2625, asmeltz@post-gazette.com or follow @asmeltz on Twitter.
First Published: March 19, 2018, 9:24 a.m.
