Cleveland City Council’s safety committee has approved an expansion of Shotspotter while adding more oversight of the controversial gunshot detection technology.
For the past two years, Cleveland police have used Shotspotter in a 3-square-mile area in the 4th police district, primarily in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood. If approved by finance committee and the full council, the expansion would cover 13 miles spread out citywide.
Safety Committee Chairman Mike Polensek held the ordinance in committee after last week’s meeting, after members raised concerns about the cost and effectiveness of the technology.
An amendment added at Thursday’s meeting would allow the Public Safety Department to spend up to $150,000 on an independent consultant that will review Shotspotter’s effectiveness and report back to city council.
During Thursday’s meeting, city leadership pushed back against opposition to the technology from local activists and some community members. Safety Director Karrie Howard, Police Chief Wayne Drummond and 4th District Commander Brandon Kutz all attended Thursday’s hearing.
Polensek, Council President Blaine Griffin, who attended part of the meeting but is not a member of the safety committee, and other supporters said Shotspotter was needed to combat gun violence in Cleveland.
“Mayor Bibb has spoke to me twice on this and has reiterated his support and opinion that this has to be implemented,” said Polensek.
According to data compiled by Cleveland police from Shotspotter’s use in the 4th District, its use has led to nine lives saved, 44 arrests and 52 guns seized since they began using it in November, 2020.
Average police response time in the area with the technology is more than two minutes shorter than in the rest of the 4th District. But it’s still above eight minutes on average.
The police found that so far this year only 9% of shootings in the city have produced a call to 911.
“Some folks feel, even if they call, nothing is going to be done,” said Drummond. “Which I would disagree with. Shotspotter kind of fills that gap for us, actually fills a huge gap for us.”
Shotspotter has come under growing criticism recently, especially in Chicago. In May, 2021, that city’s inspector general completed an audit of gunshot reports and found that less than 10 percent of the more than 50,000 alerts led to the collection of any evidence of a gun-related criminal offense.
One Shotspotter alert led police to arrest Michael Williams, charge him with murder and hold him in jail for a year before dropping the charges. He is a co-defendant in a federal lawsuit that is trying to add anyone stopped in Chicago based on a Shotspotter gunshot detection and bar the city from using it.
A review of bodycam footage from Cleveland police by Ideastream Public Media found at least two potentially unconstitutional stops.
“It’s blind hope to wish that there aren’t incidences of bad policing that have happened up until now and will continue to happen. And as we move forward from here I just want us to recognize that and not naively ignore and say that isn’t one of the things we are balancing in this legislation,” Councilwoman Rebecca Maurer said during Thursday’s council meeting, after referencing the Ideastream report and Safety Director Karrie Howard’s earlier comment that the Division of Police “doesn’t have a culture of stop-and-frisk.”
Howard said the problems brought up by Maurer are issues with individual officers, not the technology, and can be handled through the disciplinary process.
Ideastream reviewed a total of nine videos from police responses to Shotspotter alerts and found at least two potentially unconstitutional stops. There have been more than 7,000 Shotspotter alerts. Cleveland police said during the two-year Shotspotter pilot program, there has been only one policy violation, for mishandling of evidence.
In supporting the ordinance, several councilmembers stressed the need to address the city’s gun violence problems. Council President Blaine Griffin said the technology was one of several necessary tools to assist the Cleveland Division of Police.
“And how we can justify in the city of Cleveland, and not sit here and throw everything, everything, but the kitchen sink at this is beyond me,” Griffin said.
