ShotSpotter is the technology that just won’t go away. At least not yet.
Mayor Brandon Johnson intended to allow the city’s contract with the gunshot-tracking system to expire last month, but then remembered — whoops — the Democratic National Convention was coming to town. Maybe ShotSpotter wasn’t so bad after all. He renewed the contract through November, paying a premium $8.6 million price for nine months of additional use.
The flipping and flopping on ShotSpotter, over a period of weeks, was hardly Johnson’s finest episode as mayor, to put it mildly. But just as good intentions sometimes go awry, bungled missteps can turn to the city’s advantage. Perhaps that could still happen with ShotSpotter.
ShotSpotter is designed to use microphones in city neighborhoods and computer algorithms sourced from strategic response centers to “hear” gunfire in the streets and dispatch police to the scene. Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling continues to back it — bravely so, given that his boss campaigned on a promise to kill the contract.
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