On Monday night, the Durham city council voted 4-2 against signing a new contract for gunfire detection technology ShotSpotter.
The vote comes after the city council received a presentation at its February 22 work session from researchers at the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke University School of Law on their analysis of the data from the 12-month pilot conducted last year. The data showed a reduction in response times to gunshot incidents in the pilot’s three square-mile area, but the Wilson Center’s report indicated that it couldn’t draw conclusions as to whether ShotSpotter had a meaningful impact on reducing gun violence.
Twenty Durham residents, including three who identified themselves as living in the pilot area, spoke for roughly an hour during the public hearing. Folks drew connections between over-policing and the conflict in Gaza and voiced their concerns around spending city funds on “surveillance technology” instead of other resources like the HEART program to help reduce systemic harms in the community.
“ShotSpotter has promoted more violence against East Durham residents through policing of Black and brown bodies during times when no one called 911,” said Durham resident Quisha Mallette.
taari felice, an East Durham resident who recently published an op-ed opposing ShotSpotter in the INDY, said that the city should prioritize community safety initiatives, such as installing sidewalks and better lighting city parks, over ShotSpotter.
“There is a higher priority on policing communities than there is on funding things that are left to the Participatory Budget to cover,” felice said.
King Sage, who also lives in the pilot area, echoed felice.
“I never once heard my neighbors seriously say that we needed more policing and surveillance,” Sage said.
Wilma Oliver, a city of Durham employee who lives in the ShotSpotter pilot area, was the lone community member who spoke in favor of ShotSpotter during the public hearing.
“My hope is for the law-abiding citizens to look at it as, let’s take this multi-pronged approach,” Oliver said. “We’re not asking ShotSpotter to be the spear that solves the problem. I’m saying let it be one of the tines of the fork to help address this gun violence.”
Along with its report evaluating ShotSpotter’s effectiveness, researchers at the Wilson Center spoke with 30 residents of the pilot area about their experiences living in the community, interactions with police, experience with gun violence, and their feelings about ShotSpotter more broadly.
The conversations with the residents “revealed nuanced opinions on the role of police officers, the ethics of technology in policing, and the importance of community engagement and transparency in policymaking,” according to the Wilson Center’s Community Sentiment Evaluation. “Less often did these conversations reveal any observed changes in their neighborhoods after ShotSpotter was implemented. On the positive side, this means that residents generally did not observe negative outcomes that some other cities experienced, such as over-policing.”
Mayor pro tem Mark-Anthony Middleton (along with mayor Leonardo Williams) was one of the votes in favor of extending the city’s contract with ShotSpotter.
“No one ever said that ShotSpotter was going to reduce gun violence. That argument was created and then refuted as part of the discussion,” Middleton said. “What was said is that we could reduce response time. What was said is that getting to gun fire faster is important. What was said is that knowing precisely where gun fire is coming from in our streets is not a threat to our democracy.”
Middleton made the case that reducing gun violence is not an outcome of ShotSpotter that proponents of the technology, including SoundThinking, originally pitched. But council member Javiera Caballero, who was appointed to city council in 2018 (and reelected last year), says she remembers the initial conversation differently. She read a statement from SoundThinking representatives to the audience that was delivered to the city council in 2019 when the pilot was first under consideration.
“We are committed to developing comprehensive, respectful, and intimate partnerships with agencies and their respective cities organized around making a positive difference,” read the proposal. “Today, ShotSpotter is highly regarded as a critical component of a comprehensive gun violence reduction strategy.”
SoundThinking’s 2019 statement illustrates a change in attitude that Caballero says “shifts the goal posts” on the rhetoric used to present ShotSpotter. While she and other council members agree that some of the data in the Wilson Center report shows a positive impact on things like police response times, the technology is not solving the core problem of reducing gun violence.
“I will not argue the data. But to change the argument around your tool so that you can sell it better is dishonest and not fact-based,” Caballero said. She along with council members Nate Baker, Chelsea Cook, and Carl Rist, voted against extending the contract. Council member DeDreana Freeman had an excused absence from the meeting and missed the vote.
ShotSpotter might not be moving forward in Durham, but the money for the contract extension has already been allocated in the fiscal budget, said city manager Wanda Page during the meeting. The city council could choose to follow the wishes of some in the community and reallocate the funds to other public safety programs like the HEART program.
The city will host its first public hearing for the 2024-2025 fiscal budget on March 18. Last year, residents who spoke at the meeting advocated for the expansion of the HEART program and the hiring of a Vision Zero coordinator. Both items were included in the 2023-2024 budget.
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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