Several people are misinterpreting a Chicago Inspector General report that examined call disposition records on ShotSpotter alerts and found approximately 10% w

Several people are misinterpreting a Chicago Inspector General report that examined call disposition records on ShotSpotter alerts and found approximately 10% were coded with dispositions indicating a firearms offense. The misinterpretation is conflating this with a false positive rate of 90%, never mind that the police are disincentivized to thoroughly search for shell casings rather than just moving on to the next call if there are no victims, shooters, witnesses, or any other obvious evidence of a shooting on scene. It implies, at best, a rough lower bound on the false positive rate. Additionally, the author of this article is claiming the police in Albuquerque have suggested to him that when they send forensics teams to the site of detected shootings, they "find definitive evidence of actual shots fired in less than five percent of cases." This would be at least twice as bad as the rough lower bound suggested by the Chicago Inspector General report and seems way out of line with other experiences I've heard.