Good morning, readers.
Following more than five years of debate, $200,000 in city tax dollars spent, and the completion of a 12-month pilot program, Durham could be done with ShotSpotter—for the foreseeable future, anyway.
Last week, Durham’s city council voted 4-2 against signing a new $600,000 contract with the gunshot detection technology’s parent company SoundThinking. The vote came following a report from researchers at Duke Law’s Wilson Center for Science and Justice that found that, while the technology may have slightly improved police response times, it wasn’t clear that ShotSpotter had a meaningful impact on reducing gun violence.
Alongside its evaluation of the technology, the Wilson Center also conducted a Community Sentiment Evaluation in which researchers spoke with 30 Durham residents who lived within the boundaries of the the three square-mile pilot area to try to understand their experiences about living in the community, interactions with law enforcement, experience with gun violence, and their feelings about ShotSpotter more broadly.
Those conversations “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,” the evaluation stated. “Less often did these conversations reveal any observed changes in their neighborhoods after ShotSpotter was implemented.”
While Durham won’t move forward with ShotSpotter, the money for the new contract has already been allocated in the city’s budget, according to Durham city manager Wanda Page. As city leaders begin the process of making the budget, residents can weigh in on how they want to see that money reallocated.
The city will host a public hearing for the 2024-2025 fiscal year budget on March 18. Last year, Durham residents advocated for expansion of Durham’s HEART program and the hiring of a Vision Zero coordinator. Both items were funded.
Have a good Monday.
—Jane
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Durham
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Wake
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Orange
Chapel Hill’s town council considered various petitions and voted to increase project funding for the seven-story Rosemary Street parking garage at its meeting on Wednesday.
North Carolina
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Today’s weather
Sunny with a high of 62 degrees.
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