00:00These controversial surveillance devices are designed to alert authorities to gunshots,
00:05and their exact locations have been kept hidden from police and the public.
00:08Until now.
00:09Wired obtained leaked documents that reveal for the first time the secret locations of
00:1325,580 shot spotter microphones.
00:17In this video, we'll analyze that data and test the claim of activists that these sensors
00:21lead to biased over-policing of communities of color across America.
00:2512 million Americans live in a neighborhood with at least one shot spotter microphone.
00:30Are you one of them?
00:31Let's put shot spotter secret locations on the grid.
00:39This is just one of the 25,580 data points that represent shot spotter microphone locations,
00:46as indicated in the leaked documents provided to me earlier this year by a source under
00:50the condition of anonymity.
00:51To confirm that the leaked data was legit, Wired vetted the locations by physically
00:55visiting sensors in different cities, including Pasadena, California, Chicago, Illinois,
01:01I think that's it on top of the pole.
01:03Miami, Florida.
01:04There it is.
01:05I see it.
01:06And this one, attached to a street lamp near Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, where
01:10we spotted the protective casing that houses the acoustic sensors and processors.
01:15We even used Google Street View to virtually visit a random sample of locations in the
01:19document.
01:20And they check out.
01:21The sensors were exactly where the leaked data said that they would be.
01:25We don't know if our dataset includes all sensors that exist, but Tom Chittum from Sound
01:29Thinking, the company that makes them, said that as of February 2023, the document was
01:34likely authentic.
01:36The dataset represents over 1,000 elementary and high schools, dozens of billboards, scores
01:41of hospitals, and more than 100 public housing complexes where the sensors are placed.
01:45In total, the leaked document indicates shot spotter locations in 84 metropolitan areas
01:51across 34 states, plus U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
01:56Nine U.S. cities actually have more than 500 sensors installed, including Albuquerque,
02:01New Mexico, Chicago, Illinois, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Washington, D.C., where sensors can be
02:09found on U.S. government buildings, including the headquarters of the FBI, the Department
02:14of Justice, the U.S. Court of Appeals, and just outside the city, throughout the campus
02:18of the University of Maryland.
02:20So why are specific locations chosen for shot spotter?
02:24According to Tom Chittum, when police departments purchase Sound Thinking's services, they
02:28provide the company with data about gun violence in the area.
02:32Once a plan is agreed upon by the department, Sound Thinking will seek permission from private
02:36property owners, utility companies, and business owners to install sensors on their premises.
02:44While Chittum says that most property owners agree to do so without needing incentivization,
02:49the company will occasionally offer gift cards to secure access to their private property.
02:53According to the company, if a loud, impulsive sound is heard in the coverage area, sensors,
02:59often on top of buildings and streetlights, pick it up.
03:01The location of the incident is determined by measuring the time the sound takes to travel
03:05to each sensor.
03:06At minimum, three sensors need to detect a sound for it to be flagged.
03:10The sound is then first analyzed by AI to determine if it's likely a gunshot, before
03:15being sent to a shot spotter incident review center, where analysts determine whether it's
03:20gunfire or something else, like a firework or a car backfiring.
03:24If it's a gunshot, ShotSpotter then alerts law enforcement.
03:27Sound Thinking claims they keep the exact locations of their sensors secret, even from
03:31police, to protect people who allow the sensors on their property, as well as to prevent the
03:36mics themselves from being tampered with or vandalized.
03:39But this secrecy has been a point of contention for those who criticize the company.
03:44DPD we want you out!
03:46The ACLU argues that, quote, there are deep problems with the gunshot detection company
03:51and its technology, including its methodology, effectiveness, and impact on communities of color.
03:57So are activists right?
03:58Where are these microphones being placed?
04:00Wire did some digging and found the answer.
04:03After receiving the leaked documents of the sensor locations, we used the most recent
04:07census data and collected the demographic information from every census block group
04:11with at least one Sound Thinking sensor.
04:13Each census block group has between 600 and 3,000 people in it.
04:17We then analyzed sensor distribution in U.S. cities and found that, in aggregate, 70% of
04:22people who live in a neighborhood with at least one Sound Thinking sensor identified
04:26as either black or Latino, nearly three-quarters of these neighborhoods are majority non-white,
04:32and the average household earns a little more than $50,000 a year.
04:35But let's zoom in and look at individual jurisdictions.
04:38The pattern appears to be the same.
04:40Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for example, is approximately 43% white, but only 13% of
04:46residents who live in areas that have at least one ShotSpotter sensor identified as white.
04:51In Fort Myers, Florida, roughly 19% of the population is black.
04:55In block groups with at least one sensor, however, approximately 41% of the population is black.
05:01So Wire's findings do align with the theory put forth by activists and critics that ShotSpotter
05:06surveillance does disproportionately occur in poor communities of color.
05:10Why invest in ShotSpotter when it's shown it doesn't curb gun violence?
05:15It doesn't do what it says it's supposed to do.
05:17So what happens when police answer a call based on a ShotSpotter report in one of these
05:22neighborhoods?
05:23Let's go to Cincinnati, Ohio.
05:24It's New Year's Eve 2022, 8.21 p.m.
05:27Several sensors pick up two loud sounds that could be gunshots.
05:31This is body cam footage that Wire obtained of the incident.
05:34You can see police detaining a man who happened to be standing near the corner where the ShotSpotter
05:38mics detected supposed gunfire.
05:41Nine officers were sent to the location to respond.
05:43However, once there, they found no gun, no bullet casings, no bullet holes, nor any evidence
05:49that a crime had been committed there.
05:51So we kind of did about 10 feet out and it's nothing.
05:54Unless he had a revolver.
05:55Yet cops still arrested this man after they ran his name and found he'd failed to appear
06:00in court for traffic violations.
06:02This incident tracks with the 2021 Northwestern University School of Law study, which found
06:07that over a two year period, 89% of alerts in the city of Chicago did not result in police
06:12finding evidence of a gun related crime.
06:14This is likely at least in part due to how often suspected gunfire alerts end up being
06:19something else entirely.
06:20For example, according to this article, officers in Pasadena responding to scenes of ShotSpotter
06:25alerts have pointed to backfiring cars, fireworks, or even noisy construction as the actual sources
06:31of the sounds the sensors detected.
06:33And that's when the sensors are actually working.
06:37In December 2022, SoundThinking's sensors failed to issue an alert for a shooting at
06:42a Euroshop in Chicago that wounded two men.
06:45Reportedly 55 rounds were fired, yet SoundThinking's equipment sent out no alerts.
06:50The misdetections were apparently due to three out of service sensors.
06:54In fact, according to the leaked document, as many as 357 sensors in the Chicago metropolitan
07:00area were broken, unreliable, or out of service at the time.
07:04That's 9% of the total sensors in the city.
07:072,680 of SoundThinking's sensors nationwide, one in 10, were categorized as either broken,
07:13unreliable, or out of service at the time the file was created, allegedly late last
07:18year.
07:19This past September, Mayor Brandon Johnson, a vocal critic of ShotSpotter, said the city
07:23will not renew its contract with SoundThinking.
07:25On a side note, one interesting use case for ShotSpotter can be found way across the world
07:30in South Africa.
07:31The Kruger National Park, one of the most renowned wildlife conservation areas in the
07:35world, has sensors throughout its grounds, presumably to curb the poaching of endangered
07:40species.
07:41Want to see if there's a ShotSpotter near you?
07:44Click on the WIRED article in this video's description and search the data yourself.
07:48I'm Drew Marotra, thanks for watching On The Grid.
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