Mayor Harrell Proposes $1 Million For Questionable Surveillance Tech

Opposing Mayor Bruce Harrell's proposal to spend $ 1 million on a gunshot detection system called ShotSpotter, Lisa Herbold, chair of the city council's public safety committee, was concerned about the invasion of privacy and the lack of results demonstrated by technology. The discussion comes as the mayor and council try to agree on ways to "rethink public safety" with a $ 7.4 billion budget for next year following reports of a spike in shootings last year.

This isn't the first time Seattle has considered investing in technology that uses neighborhood microphones to detect gunshots and alert the police. Harrell supported the idea multiple times during his tenure on the Seattle City Council. But whenever city officials came up with the idea of ​​planting insects to monitor some of their historically marginalized communities, civil rights activists and police activists rallied to reject the proposals.

With gun violence on the rise in the South End and downtown, Harrell has resumed his quixotic quest to bring the city aboard with ShotSpotter. However, the technology has gained even more attention in other major US cities since it last promoted the idea. Recent research suggests that surveillance technology has had little effect on reducing crime rates and has been used to justify more aggressive police tactics.

Mayor Harrell's lifelong love affair with ShotSpotter

In an email, a spokesman for the mayor said the offer to invest in ShotSpotter is the result of "panel discussions" held by the mayor's office with "mothers affected by gun violence" supporting the technology. A group of six mothers who have lost children to firearms began meeting in August 2021 to "create culturally informed victim systems for families facing similar circumstances," she said.

However, Harrell's support for the system began well before his campaign last year, when he mentioned support for "automatic gun detection systems" like ShotSpotter as part of his plan to reduce gun violence. In 2014, then-council member Harrell defended the use of surveillance technology despite concerns from civil rights defenders that permanently recorded microphone systems would also pick up the conversations of law-abiding citizens on the sidewalk. .

In 2016, then Prime Minister Harrell backed a plan to install a ShotSpotter in Rainier Valley in response to a string of shootings, including the killing of two black youths in his neighborhood. Even then, studies of ShotSpotter's use in other major American cities questioned its effectiveness. In the same year, the Center for Investigative Journalism, after reviewing the history of the system in San Francisco, found that more than 3,000 ShotSpotter warnings in two and a half years led to a firearm arrest.

Recent data confirms suspicions about ShotSpotter's effectiveness

Despite these critical reports, American cities continue to invest in this technology. Over the summer, a volunteer committee in Portland recommended the technology to the city, and Mayor Ted Wheeler announced last week that his office would develop a pilot program for it.

However, in carrying out the pilot project, Wheeler ignored the concerns of Smart City PDX, the city office dedicated to surveillance technology and public data ethics. In the report, they noted the potential of the technology to justify further searches of blacks and browns in areas with the highest rates of armed crime, as well as the danger the police pose to people in the area when the system receives false alarms.

In response to Mayor Harrell's recent proposal to field ShotSpotter in Seattle, opponents of the plan have raised similar concerns.

Councilor Lisa Herbold agreed with the mayor's focus on gun violence as a "serious problem," but echoed concerns reflected in the Smart City PDX analysis. He pointed to a 2021 Chicago Office of Inspector General (OIG) report that stated that ShotSpotter's warnings rarely lead to evidence of a gun crime.

In this report, OIG Chicago analyzed all ShotSpotter alerts in the city between January 1, 2020 and May 31, 2021. Of the 50,176 confirmed gunfire alerts received by the system during that period, OIG's review found evidence of a criminal offense. on the use of firearms on the site of operations research.

ShotSpotter's senior vice president of marketing, Sam Klepper, disputed the results. In his statement, he said that some guns don't eject shells or do so "accidentally," so just because a police officer doesn't find evidence of a shot at the scene doesn't mean the system isn't working. Also, because a large number of alarms are received at night, it can be difficult for agents to gather evidence and bring witnesses when they respond to an alarm.

However, this response only further underscores Herbold's argument against the development of technology. In his view, the lack of substantiated results linking ShotSpotter's warnings to reports of gun violence should warn city officials against installing surveillance technology that could send Seattle Police Department officers, who are already overloaded. , in a place where they are unlikely to be caught. suspect or find your own. clues to help you find the gun.

ShotSpotter can justify partial policing in marginalized communities

Despite the potential for false positives and the lack of data to support its effectiveness in solving armed crimes in general, it is not difficult to see the appeal of any technology that promises to save the life of at least one victim of gun violence. But the cost to communities that ShotSpotter will monitor could be much higher than the mayor's $ 1 million budget proposal.

An OIG report in Chicago found that ShotSpotter's presence changed the way Chicago police officers interact with people living in surveillance communities. In 1,366 investigative arrests over a 17-month period, the Chicago OIG found that a police officer justified the arrest and search by citing a ShotSpotter warning number that was not in the database of possible confirmed shootings.

This means that Chicago cops responded to a false alarm and then stopped someone in the neighborhood more than 80 times a month. More worrying, the Chicago OIG has found examples of police using huge amounts of ShotSpotter alarms in a specific area to justify multiple stops and / or searches.

As the highest concentration of gun violence coincides with many of Seattle's historically black and brown neighborhoods, the introduction of ShotSpotter could provide the police department, still under federal oversight due to its fragmented police history, a reason to continue. this tracking model. black cops.

Rather than risk these potentially devastating consequences, Herbold wants the mayor to "focus our investments on solutions that actually work to combat gun violence," such as the King County Regional Peacekeeper Collective.

The Mayor's Budget proposal will spend $ 1.5 million to support the Collective's work, so there seems to be some common ground to agree with the Council if the Mayor is willing to take away years of promoting malfunctioning surveillance technology. appears to help reduce gun violence or lead to convictions after shootings.

Seattle City Hall, May 3, 2022