Gunshot location service coming to Quincy

QUINCY - Quincy agreed to a $130,000 contract with a gunshot detection and location service.

The city council recently approved a one-year contract with ShotSpotter. The product is manufactured and run by California-based SST.

The company plans to install acoustic sensors designed to pick up the sounds of gunshots or explosions in the city, according to the company's information. A report is sent to a data center, where the location is pinpointed. The company sends an alert to police.

Mayor Jim Hemberry said the item wasn't in the city's budget. Company representatives spoke to the council during a budget workshop. The program is in addition to the 2012 police budget.

Council?member Jose Saldana asked Police Chief Richard Ackerman whether he contacted other cities using ShotSpotter to ask how effective the service was.

"I've done a fair amount of research on the Internet. I looked up (the company's) material, and it has the appearance (of being effective)," Ackerman said.

Saldana interrupted the chief saying he wasn't interested in information from the Internet. He wanted to know whether the chief had spoken to other law enforcement officials.

Ackerman said he hadn't spoken to any police chiefs directly.

"I'd like to see that be done," Saldana said. "Not just an Internet-based (research). He's a salesman. I'm a salesman. We've got to do everything to sell. I just want facts."

Hemberry took the blame for not telling the chief to get more information from other police agencies.

Council member Scott Lybbert agreed with Saldana, saying he was in favor of the project, but he wanted to hear some more information.

Ackerman had long conversations with company representatives as well as people who used the system, he said.

"I've done a lot more than just read a few brochures and look at a few things on the Internet," he said. "I've talked to all of my officers. I've talked to Sal Mancini. He wrote me a lengthy two-page memo on the pros and cons of the system."

He pointed to a case where gun shots were heard by witnesses several minutes prior to the actual shooting, he said. Prior to the last homicide in the city, police received a report of gun shots being fired about once every two to three days.

Every city is different and it would be hard to compare Quincy to Oakland, Ackerman said; adding he believes it will benefit people in Quincy.

"With me calling and talking with other chiefs, I can almost guarantee they're going to give me positive feedback for the most part," he said. "There is no system that was ever invented that was perfect, but I would venture to guess, based on what I read, that if I call up a chief that has already had this in place and already made positive comments that chief is going to tell me the same thing in person."

Saldana continued questioning the system, saying he was concerned for officer safety, and the fact they wouldn't know what the conditions were surrounding the report of gun shots.

Brad Driggers, the company's western region director, said previous versions of the technology simply reported where the shots were fired. The newer versions include analysis by former law enforcement professionals.

"So when an alert comes into our cloud, into our review center, our reviewers send forth, in a matter of seconds, their expert opinion that says to the officer, 'You're going into a situation where there are likely multiple shooters. You're going into a situation where you have a moving shooter.' They can even figure out if you're going into a situation where you have a trained sniper," he said.

Senior Vice President Gregg Rowland claimed officers are safer responding with the information from ShotSpotter than from a 9-1-1 call. He pointed to a study sponsored by the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives of seven cities using the services. Every city reported the officers were safer with ShotSpotter's information.

"Because the 9-1-1 call is only someone calling in and saying, 'I think I heard something,' or 'I think I saw something,'" he said. "I guarantee you next year you're going to be renewing that contract because you're going to get the same results that everybody else does."

After more questions from Saldana, Rowland said if the shots are fired inside a building with the windows closed, the senors may not detect it.

"That is the one downside of the technology," he said. "Luckily, the FBI will tell you 99 percent of all violent crime (from weapons discharges) is conducted outside ... More importantly, we're here to try to get you to a point where you can get this system installed and running before your warm months."

When Councilmember Jeremy McCreary questioned how many gun shots aren't reported, Ackerman replied he wasn't sure.

"It would be hard to guess," the chief said. "We had one inside for sure ... a shotgun blast. We got that as an explosion versus a shots-fired. I don't have any hard statistics, but there are, for sure, shots fired that haven't been called in."

Councilmember Travis Wittman supported voting on the proposal, saying the worst case scenario was they used the software for a year.

The mayor agreed with Wittman about the contract, saying the city won't know how well it works until the system is installed.

"Other communities might come back and tell us that it works great, and we really don't get anything out of it," he said. "There is an outcry from people in this community that they want something done, and I'm a firm believer that we can't arrest our way out of this problem. We have to take advantage of the technology that's out there."

After the vote was nearly delayed to a future meeting, Wittman questioned what the benefit of getting additional information was.

"My opinion is, we should either try it or we shouldn't," he said. "Jose and my parents live relatively close to each other. We could hear the same gunfire, or the same loud noise. We don't call it in because we think somebody else is going to call it in."

Wittman questioned what research the other councilmembers wanted, saying he doesn't see other cities with a similar size and demographics.

Lybbert echoed Wittman's comments saying Quincy is fairly unique since a lot of residents don't live in the city for the entire year and most similar communities could afford the system.

Police Capt. Gene Fretheim said the service and 9-1-1 calls aren't the same. He pointed out the Multi-Agency Communications Center usually spends about three or four minutes asking the person reporting the crime questions before someone is dispatched.

"Then we get there 10 minutes (later) in the vicinity in some section of town," he said. "That's about as close as we get. We might be a block away from where the actual noise occurred. Then we look around. We spend another half hour looking around that general area, just hoping we might find some empty casings."

The citizens see officers respond half an hour after the call, walk around for another hour, and leave, Fretheim said. Leading people to think the police don't do anything.

"This is a great tool for a lot of reasons, but for building trust with the community, it's number one," he said.

Councilmember Paul Worley brought up the point it doesn't matter how much technology the city has if officers aren't available to respond.

Worley, Wittman, Lybbert and Council-member Tony Gonzalez approved the contract and McCreary and Saldana opposed it.