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Statements like "shotspotter doesn't work" are reductive. Let's be specific about what it does and doesn't do. Some departments have found the data to not be

Statements like "shotspotter doesn't work" are reductive. Let's be specific about what it does and doesn't do. Some departments have found the data to not be actionable using current response methods. However, the systems are good at detecting gunshot like noises. This data is much more actionable for placing a camera than how cameras are placed today, which is "this intersection is near where crime happened last year, let's bolt a camera to the pole" Drone navigation has been progressing quite a lot over the past decade, and law enforcement in some places is already using them in an automated way, as the article mentions. Also, the suggestion above was forward looking, it wasn't suggesting that the NYPD should glue these systems together today.

vkou 3y ago
> Let's be specific about what it does and doesn't do It doesn't tell a gunshot from a dumpster lid slamming shut. It does produce almost entirely false positives. It doesn't identify the location of a gunshot to any useful level of precision. I suppose if you want to start a police state, and make every fourth resident a cop, you might be able to mitigate the 90% false-positive rate, and the horrible location-identification rate, but at that point, do you even need shot-spotter?
- kube-system 3y ago
  Those are exactly some of the things that augmenting the data with video would help to address, which was the point of the above suggestion. Right now, police have data about where loud sounds generally come from, and video from fixed poles where crime happened in previous years. Both of these aren't great data points on their own. The intersection of that data: [Video around locations where loud noises just happened] is probably much better than disjointed data points of [video of where crime happened in previous years] and [general locations of where loud sounds are happening].

vkou 3y ago

> Let's be specific about what it does and doesn't do It doesn't tell a gunshot from a dumpster lid slamming shut. It does produce almost entirely false positives. It doesn't identify the location of a gunshot to any useful level of precision. I suppose if you want to start a police state, and make every fourth resident a cop, you might be able to mitigate the 90% false-positive rate, and the horrible location-identification rate, but at that point, do you even need shot-spotter?

kube-system 3y ago
Those are exactly some of the things that augmenting the data with video would help to address, which was the point of the above suggestion. Right now, police have data about where loud sounds generally come from, and video from fixed poles where crime happened in previous years. Both of these aren't great data points on their own. The intersection of that data: [Video around locations where loud noises just happened] is probably much better than disjointed data points of [video of where crime happened in previous years] and [general locations of where loud sounds are happening].