The Durham City Council voted 4-2 on Monday to not extend the city’s contract with the ShotSpotter gunshot detection service for an additional three months after the year-long pilot program ended on December 14.
Activists gathered at city hall Monday evening to object to the continued use of ShotSpotter, saying the tool was an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars and that it further discriminated against Black and brown communities. Many speakers also leveraged their time during the public hearing to draw attention to the conflict in Gaza by demanding that the city council sign a ceasefire resolution brought forth by UE Local 150, a union that represents public workers throughout North Carolina.
“We need you all to stand with us against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza by passing the permanent ceasefire resolution that UE 150 sent to you,” Leslie St. Dre, one of 15 speakers during the public hearing, said.
According to city council procedure, folks who sign up to speak on an agenda item are expected to remain on topic. Items not included on the general business agenda are discussed during “citizen’s matters” at the city council work sessions. Mayor Williams asked multiple times for speakers to stay on the topic of ShotSpotter but was repeatedly met with resistance throughout the public hearing as speakers reiterated their calls for a ceasefire resolution. Manju Rajendran, a local activist and member of Durham Beyond Policing, said it is hard to ignore the correlation between injustice in Durham and conflict abroad.
“ShotSpotter gunshot surveillance has been sold to Black and Brown community members as a false solution to the gun violence and heartbreak that’s hurting our communities,” Rajendran said. “I understand that we are not to connect the dots between the ways that social spending has been gutted to pay for war, to pay for militarism, to pay for ShotSpotter, but I think there are dots to connect here around policing, incarceration, and the fact that workers have been coming year after year and begging to be paid wages that would allow them to live in this city.”
The city council approved the $200,000 contract with ShotSpotter (whose parent company is now called SoundThinking Inc) in last year’s budget by a vote of 4-3. The technology covered a three-mile area covering parts of east Durham and southeast Durham. Members of council were divided on whether ShotSpotter would be a welcome tool for better public safety or a weapon that police would wield against marginalized communities who are already over-surveilled and over-policed. Mayor Williams, Mayor Pro Tem Mark-Anthony Middleton and Councilor DeDreana Freeman were among the proponents along with then-mayor Elaine O’Neal.
Former council member Jillian Johnson said at the time that she “wondered if the company was choosing which success stories to highlight” in its promotion of the technology’s efficacy. Now that the pilot program is over, city staff has enlisted the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke University to administer a third-party examination of the data and report its findings back to city council. That work is expected to happen over the next three months, during which time the ShotSpotter service will not be in effect. The council could choose to renew its contract with ShotSpotter after the analysis from the Wilson Center.
Middleton, one of the two votes to continue ShotSpotter on Monday along with Williams, said it’s important to see the data before making a decision on whether to move away from the program. According to the ShotSpotter dashboard on the city’s website, he noted, over 70 percent of recorded incidents did not have a corresponding 911 phone call.
“Tonight, there are people in their homes watching this meeting who have family members sitting next to them who survived a gunshot wound because we got to them while they were bleeding out and no one called 911,” Middleton said. “There are thousands of people who live in our city who have resigned themselves to the proposition that nightly gun fire is just the way it is.”
Community members raised concerns about spending money on ShotSpotter in lieu of other programs that could improve mental and physical well-being and reduce crime. Although Williams voted to extend ShotSpotter on Monday, he has been a proponent of increasing investment in youth services, which he reiterated during the meeting.
“I hear a lot of the commentary around why not [ShotSpotter],” Williams said. “I actually agree with a lot of it. I said the same thing. We do need more food security programs. We do need better healthcare. We do need after school programs. Our kids are too bored in this city. We have to have more of a robust recreational program across the entire city. We have to invest in our kids.”
Follow Reporter Justin Laidlaw on Twitter or send an email to jlaidlaw@indyweek.com. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.
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