3 ms·

How would you know no one called it in? Also ShotSpotter has false positives. You have no way of knowing if you (or it) even heard a gun or one of many other t

by smt88 3y ago

How would you know no one called it in? Also ShotSpotter has false positives. You have no way of knowing if you (or it) even heard a gun or one of many other things.

splintercell 3y ago
What's the problem with false positives in this case? I'm pretty sure, "don't bother with this technology which reports shots to the cops, because it has false positives" is a very weak argument.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  If the false positive rate is 5%, it’s probably not much of a problem in terms of the overall balance of effectiveness. If the false positive rate is 95%, it’s pretty obviously going to be a diversion of police resources from whatever else they could be doing if not responding to zero-value alerts.
  - fasthands9 3y ago
    https://www.edgewortheconomics.com/experience-independent-audit-of-the-shotspotter-accuracy https://www.edgewortheconomics.com/experience-independent-au... This claims the false positive rate is under 3%. It's based on Shotspotter's statistics and "independent audit" statistics. Not sure how trustworthy either is, but without better stats from anywhere else I have no reason to doubt the claim the false positive is pretty low. Seems like even if false positive rate was at 50% it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Cities have police on patrol at all times anyway - it would just mean sending someone to drive 5 minutes away to see if there is visible a disturbance instead of them driving around the area they were currently randomly patrolling.
- enobrev 3y ago
  If police show up to your family residence with guns drawn for a false positive, you might have a different perspective.
whimsicalism 3y ago
Here is one instance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich We talked to the cops (not in this instance but in another homicide)

3 ms·

How would you know no one called it in? Also ShotSpotter has false positives. You have no way of knowing if you (or it) even heard a gun or one of many other t

by smt88 3y ago

How would you know no one called it in? Also ShotSpotter has false positives. You have no way of knowing if you (or it) even heard a gun or one of many other things.

splintercell 3y ago
What's the problem with false positives in this case? I'm pretty sure, "don't bother with this technology which reports shots to the cops, because it has false positives" is a very weak argument.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  If the false positive rate is 5%, it’s probably not much of a problem in terms of the overall balance of effectiveness. If the false positive rate is 95%, it’s pretty obviously going to be a diversion of police resources from whatever else they could be doing if not responding to zero-value alerts.
  - fasthands9 3y ago
    https://www.edgewortheconomics.com/experience-independent-audit-of-the-shotspotter-accuracy https://www.edgewortheconomics.com/experience-independent-au... This claims the false positive rate is under 3%. It's based on Shotspotter's statistics and "independent audit" statistics. Not sure how trustworthy either is, but without better stats from anywhere else I have no reason to doubt the claim the false positive is pretty low. Seems like even if false positive rate was at 50% it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Cities have police on patrol at all times anyway - it would just mean sending someone to drive 5 minutes away to see if there is visible a disturbance instead of them driving around the area they were currently randomly patrolling.
- enobrev 3y ago
  If police show up to your family residence with guns drawn for a false positive, you might have a different perspective.
whimsicalism 3y ago
Here is one instance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich We talked to the cops (not in this instance but in another homicide)