Today, Brooklyn Defenders released a new report that analyzes nine years of NYPD performance data of the ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology, and found extremely low confirmation rates throughout its history. The findings show Black and Latine New Yorkers bear the overwhelming brunt of ShotSpotter-related police deployments. As New York City’s current ShotSpotter contract is set to expire this month, the report concludes that the city should cancel its ShotSpotter contract.

The technology is claimed to improve the identification of gunfire incidents through the use of an array of microphones and sensors, but previously unreleased data reveals this expensive technology is unreliable and fails to make New Yorkers safer. Obtained by Brooklyn Defenders from the NYPD via FOIL request, the dataset is the largest disclosure of ShotSpotter performance data to date from any city.

Brooklyn Defenders’ analysis found three major new discoveries, consistent with major findings in other cities (e.g. Chicago and Atlanta) and by the New York City Comptroller:

1. NYPD’s own data demonstrate ShotSpotter’s consistently poor performance. Over nine years, the system’s confirmation rate—the rate at which the department can corroborate the accuracy of a ShotSpotter alert—has been just 16.57%. Until this FOIL response, NYPD has not disclosed this tracking or its ShotSpotter’s performance metrics. Instead, the NYPD expanded, extended, and renewed its ShotSpotter contract.

2. Over 99% of ShotSpotter’s alerts did not lead to the recovery of guns or identification of those involved in gun violence, costing taxpayers millions to fail at its stated purpose. According to the NYPD’s own data, less than 0.9% of responses to ShotSpotter alerts resulted in NYPD recovering a firearm, and only 0.7% of responses resulted in NYPD making an arrest for alleged illegal activity of any kind.

3. ShotSpotter’s sensors — which are disproportionately located in neighborhoods with higher numbers of Black and Latine residents — report a staggeringly high number of unconfirmed alerts, leading to an increase in surveillance and policing. Black and Latine residents make up two-thirds of the New Yorkers who live in areas surveilled by ShotSpotter. Black residents in the city live in the same police precinct as 93% more unconfirmed alerts than the citywide average. Neighborhoods with predominantly Black residents are 3.5 times more likely to have an officer deployed based on an unconfirmed alert than a neighborhood with predominantly white residents.

“In the city where the Floyd court found the NYPD had systematically targeted members of the Black and Latine communities for unconstitutional stops, NYPD's tech-washing investment in ShotSpotter merely perpetuates a history of racially-biased policing,” said Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez, former director of Brooklyn Defenders’ Science and Surveillance Project and co-founder of the Forensic Evidence Table. “Evaluating the only data available on ShotSpotter's reliability, this report confirms that the unvalidated technology is not leading to the recovery of guns or the interruption of gun violence. It is time for New York to dismantle its surveillance apparatus, and we can start by ending its relationship with ShotSpotter.”

“Like so many of NYPD’s other massively expensive and invasive technologies, ShotSpotter is an engine for over-policing that leads to an influx of police in Black and Latine neighborhoods based on false gunshot alerts,” said Jackie Gosdigian, Senior Policy Supervisor with Brooklyn Defenders. “Given the tool’s lack of reliability and high price tag, it is clear that NYC should not renew its contract for this technology. Instead, the city should use this investment on efforts that actually make our communities safer: education, health, poverty reduction, cure-violence and community-based programs, and other resources.” 

Find Brooklyn Defender’s full report here.

Find our interview in Hell Gate here.