4 ms·

It's scary that prosecutors thought that the ShotSpotter evidence is suitable for a court. It's amazing technology that can help police get to a crime scene qu

It's scary that prosecutors thought that the ShotSpotter evidence is suitable for a court. It's amazing technology that can help police get to a crime scene quickly but is far too easy to spoof or get the wrong answer due to reflections and other sounds etc. Hopefully cases like this will eventually stop the system being used in court.

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
I mean, drug dogs are still a thing even though we know they tend to respond to owners desires regardless of if there’s drugs present.
- yawaworht1978 5y ago
  Wow i have never heard of that. Curious to see a link/article on the issue, if you can provide.
  - DaftDank 5y ago
    This is a decent summary of court cases related to the dogs: https://www.nlrg.com/criminal-law-legal-research/bid/84670/CRIMINAL-LAW-UPDATE-Reliability-of-Narcotics-Dogs-to-Be-Revisited-by-U-S-Supreme-Court https://www.nlrg.com/criminal-law-legal-research/bid/84670/C... I think this part is pretty key, and has always been a big open question in my mind: "The court further recognized a potential problem in assessing reliability related to handler cuing, as even well-trained dogs could respond to subconscious cues from their handlers. For this reason, the court determined that a critical factor in determining reliability is the record of false positive alerts made by the dog." The subconscious cues, or even deliberate cues that only the handler and dog know, could allow an officer with ill intentions to make some kind of signal only known to him and the dog, which causes the dog to make an "alert", giving the cop probable cause.
    - leephillips 5y ago
      Some departments deploy dogs that alert on all vehicles when they want an excuse to search. In at least one department, this was referred to as “probable cause on four legs”. If judges continue to allow this quality of evidence, the police will continue to abuse the legal environment that creates.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        Let's face it - most judges are, at least subconsciously, on the same side as the police and prosecutors even though that's not how the system should work.
        dylan604 5y ago
        >though that's now how the system should work. I'm assuming that's an unfortunate Freudian slip of a typo. not how the system should work, even though it is now how it seems to work.
        pixl97 5y ago
        You know what you call a judge, a prosecutor, and a cop eating at the same table? Your average lunch near the courthouse.
        Spooky23 5y ago
        I don’t know about that. Judges have front row seats to the 10,000 ways that cops, prosecutors and defense attorneys screw up every day. If anything, I think the expense of defense and the poor quality of public defenders probably accounts for bias.
        giantg2 5y ago
        Magistrates aren't even required to pass the bar. I had one think that I was calling him prejudiced when asking to dismiss with prejudice (and many other examples with other magistrates, but this one is somewhat funny). I had a judge say that you can't use statements made at a prior trial to discredit the same witness at the current trial if their testimony conflicts. He also denied said that a trial de novo is a "complete do-over" yet denied a petition to dismiss because there's no record of the issues being raised before the end of the trial. So is it a complete do-over? The whole reason they do de novo trials for appeals from the magistrate is because the magistrate doesn't have a court reporter. Not to mention one of the complaints was that the magistrate wouldn't even hear the petition, responding with "That's not gonna happen". Makes sense since he was a retired police cheif. The judge also called me a sovereign citizen when I asked to speak, even though I met the definition of a litigant under the state constitution. There were some minor things too. The main point is, he knew rights had been violated in an irrevocable way as part of that case but decided that it didn't matter. My impression is that if they do recognize it, they don't care. I also think many dont recognize it. After all, are they going to side with a layman citizen or the police and prosecutor? Even with a defense attorney, it often comes down to the police officer's word vs the accused. Who are they going to believe?
  - CraigJPerry 5y ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078300/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078300/ Backs up the GP claim but I can’t find any evidence of this being replicated in another independent experiment. It’s at least a little bit strange that no one tried to replicate these rather concerning findings in the past 10 years since publication.
    - hanniabu 5y ago
      They probably refused new experiments because of this. It's better to have one test with this result that you can refute as a one off result that hasn't been replicated than dealing with multiple tests with the same result.
  - c22 5y ago
    An internet search for drug dog false alert returns numerous results.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - sennight 5y ago
    If you like that you'll love the Wikipedia entry for polygraphs :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Effectiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Effectiveness
  - wpietri 5y ago
    For those interested, I recommend reading about "Clever Hans", the horse that could supposedly do math: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
  - lenkite 5y ago
    "Drug-sniffing dogs in traffic stops often wrong" https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2011-01-06-ct-met-canine-officers-20110105-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2011-01-06-ct-met...
DaftDank 5y ago
I started reading "Amazon Unbound" by Brad Stone, and in the part where he discusses the development of Alexa, my laymen self had never considered how difficult it would be to train that thing. I think the term was "far-field" speech recognition, and all the problems that come up when adding in real world variables. People talking from across the room while others are talking, or the TV is going, or as you said, reflections and other materials in the room. I agree that it is disturbing they tried to use this as evidence.
smt88 5y ago
The only people saying ShotSpotter is amazing technology are ShotSpotter's PR team. By all other accounts, it doesn't work at all and is losing contracts. > "...a study of Chicago police data found that over a nearly 22-month period ending in mid-April, almost 90% of ShotSpotter alerts didn’t result in officers reporting evidence of shots fired or of any gun crime."[1] > "In four years, police have made two arrests while responding to a ShotSpotter activation. Lt. Shawn Takeuchi, an SDPD spokesman, could only confirm that one of those arrests was directly related to the activation, but declined to give more information on both."[2] 1. https://apnews.com/article/chicago-police-crime-shootings-be9e44796bd7e6e3c94108c5e3905ede https://apnews.com/article/chicago-police-crime-shootings-be... 2. https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-safety/shotspotter-sensors-send-sdpd-officers-to-false-alarms-more-often-than-advertised/ https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-safety/shotspo...
tyingq 5y ago
>Hopefully cases like this will eventually stop the system being used in court. I don't see any incentive here. The only consequence suffered by the prosecution was having to drop that evidence. That's it. Maybe there's a civil case later, but that will be separated by a large time gap, etc.
giantg2 5y ago
"Hopefully cases like this will eventually stop the system being used in court." Maybe it will stop this system from being used in court, but new ones will take its place. It would be great if we could change the structure of the justice system to prevent these types of issues from popping up again. I have no idea what a solution would look like.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  If you did that then everyone on here would be ranting about old judges and a luddite system instead
  - giantg2 5y ago
    Those same complaints are still applicable today.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    You don't have to ban new technology, just impose standards on it.
mbg721 5y ago
My personal theory has long been that "technology" is the word people use for things that don't reliably work. It's never clean drinking water from the tap or the seed drill, it's stuff like this or clunky meeting software.
tmpz22 5y ago
> It's amazing technology Serious question, what part of this technology is amazing? Its just sounds trained against audio labeled as gun shots. How is this any different then detecting faces in images or whatever?

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago

I mean, drug dogs are still a thing even though we know they tend to respond to owners desires regardless of if there’s drugs present.

yawaworht1978 5y ago
Wow i have never heard of that. Curious to see a link/article on the issue, if you can provide.
- DaftDank 5y ago
  This is a decent summary of court cases related to the dogs: https://www.nlrg.com/criminal-law-legal-research/bid/84670/CRIMINAL-LAW-UPDATE-Reliability-of-Narcotics-Dogs-to-Be-Revisited-by-U-S-Supreme-Court https://www.nlrg.com/criminal-law-legal-research/bid/84670/C... I think this part is pretty key, and has always been a big open question in my mind: "The court further recognized a potential problem in assessing reliability related to handler cuing, as even well-trained dogs could respond to subconscious cues from their handlers. For this reason, the court determined that a critical factor in determining reliability is the record of false positive alerts made by the dog." The subconscious cues, or even deliberate cues that only the handler and dog know, could allow an officer with ill intentions to make some kind of signal only known to him and the dog, which causes the dog to make an "alert", giving the cop probable cause.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    Some departments deploy dogs that alert on all vehicles when they want an excuse to search. In at least one department, this was referred to as “probable cause on four legs”. If judges continue to allow this quality of evidence, the police will continue to abuse the legal environment that creates.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Let's face it - most judges are, at least subconsciously, on the same side as the police and prosecutors even though that's not how the system should work.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        >though that's now how the system should work. I'm assuming that's an unfortunate Freudian slip of a typo. not how the system should work, even though it is now how it seems to work.
      - pixl97 5y ago
        You know what you call a judge, a prosecutor, and a cop eating at the same table? Your average lunch near the courthouse.
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        I don’t know about that. Judges have front row seats to the 10,000 ways that cops, prosecutors and defense attorneys screw up every day. If anything, I think the expense of defense and the poor quality of public defenders probably accounts for bias.
        giantg2 5y ago
        Magistrates aren't even required to pass the bar. I had one think that I was calling him prejudiced when asking to dismiss with prejudice (and many other examples with other magistrates, but this one is somewhat funny). I had a judge say that you can't use statements made at a prior trial to discredit the same witness at the current trial if their testimony conflicts. He also denied said that a trial de novo is a "complete do-over" yet denied a petition to dismiss because there's no record of the issues being raised before the end of the trial. So is it a complete do-over? The whole reason they do de novo trials for appeals from the magistrate is because the magistrate doesn't have a court reporter. Not to mention one of the complaints was that the magistrate wouldn't even hear the petition, responding with "That's not gonna happen". Makes sense since he was a retired police cheif. The judge also called me a sovereign citizen when I asked to speak, even though I met the definition of a litigant under the state constitution. There were some minor things too. The main point is, he knew rights had been violated in an irrevocable way as part of that case but decided that it didn't matter. My impression is that if they do recognize it, they don't care. I also think many dont recognize it. After all, are they going to side with a layman citizen or the police and prosecutor? Even with a defense attorney, it often comes down to the police officer's word vs the accused. Who are they going to believe?
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078300/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078300/ Backs up the GP claim but I can’t find any evidence of this being replicated in another independent experiment. It’s at least a little bit strange that no one tried to replicate these rather concerning findings in the past 10 years since publication.
  - hanniabu 5y ago
    They probably refused new experiments because of this. It's better to have one test with this result that you can refute as a one off result that hasn't been replicated than dealing with multiple tests with the same result.
- c22 5y ago
  An internet search for drug dog false alert returns numerous results.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sennight 5y ago
  If you like that you'll love the Wikipedia entry for polygraphs :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Effectiveness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Effectiveness
- wpietri 5y ago
  For those interested, I recommend reading about "Clever Hans", the horse that could supposedly do math: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
- lenkite 5y ago
  "Drug-sniffing dogs in traffic stops often wrong" https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2011-01-06-ct-met-canine-officers-20110105-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2011-01-06-ct-met...

DaftDank 5y ago

I started reading "Amazon Unbound" by Brad Stone, and in the part where he discusses the development of Alexa, my laymen self had never considered how difficult it would be to train that thing. I think the term was "far-field" speech recognition, and all the problems that come up when adding in real world variables. People talking from across the room while others are talking, or the TV is going, or as you said, reflections and other materials in the room. I agree that it is disturbing they tried to use this as evidence.

smt88 5y ago

The only people saying ShotSpotter is amazing technology are ShotSpotter's PR team. By all other accounts, it doesn't work at all and is losing contracts. > "...a study of Chicago police data found that over a nearly 22-month period ending in mid-April, almost 90% of ShotSpotter alerts didn’t result in officers reporting evidence of shots fired or of any gun crime."[1] > "In four years, police have made two arrests while responding to a ShotSpotter activation. Lt. Shawn Takeuchi, an SDPD spokesman, could only confirm that one of those arrests was directly related to the activation, but declined to give more information on both."[2] 1. https://apnews.com/article/chicago-police-crime-shootings-be9e44796bd7e6e3c94108c5e3905ede https://apnews.com/article/chicago-police-crime-shootings-be... 2. https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-safety/shotspotter-sensors-send-sdpd-officers-to-false-alarms-more-often-than-advertised/ https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-safety/shotspo...

tyingq 5y ago

>Hopefully cases like this will eventually stop the system being used in court. I don't see any incentive here. The only consequence suffered by the prosecution was having to drop that evidence. That's it. Maybe there's a civil case later, but that will be separated by a large time gap, etc.

giantg2 5y ago

"Hopefully cases like this will eventually stop the system being used in court." Maybe it will stop this system from being used in court, but new ones will take its place. It would be great if we could change the structure of the justice system to prevent these types of issues from popping up again. I have no idea what a solution would look like.

thatguy0900 5y ago
If you did that then everyone on here would be ranting about old judges and a luddite system instead
- giantg2 5y ago
  Those same complaints are still applicable today.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  You don't have to ban new technology, just impose standards on it.

mbg721 5y ago

My personal theory has long been that "technology" is the word people use for things that don't reliably work. It's never clean drinking water from the tap or the seed drill, it's stuff like this or clunky meeting software.

tmpz22 5y ago

> It's amazing technology Serious question, what part of this technology is amazing? Its just sounds trained against audio labeled as gun shots. How is this any different then detecting faces in images or whatever?