Looks Like The Shotspotter Really Works... Or Maybe Not

Isn't Camden one of the most crime ridden cities in the country?

Well, the writer of the article seems to be like most reporters when it comes to this stuff. He appears to take the majority of their claims at face value about the capabilities of the system without actually investigating the ability of "cameras that can spot a stash in a discarded pack of Newports from blocks away." And claiming that 121 cameras cover "virtually every inch" of the city.

Other reports on ShotSpotter seem to indicate that it's output is not completely reliable, so it's hard to say this is proof of it "working". It's more proof that it is generating alerts of sounds like gunfire.

The article also talks about how the residents of the city attempt to police themselves in many cases, so it's not that surprising that every gunshot is not called in to the police in a warzone.

Now all they need to do is tie together ShotSpotter with Camden's nascent DealSpotter LPR database, of which John reported a while back.

They could pull the shooter over by the next traffic signal. ;)

New update: this municipality discontinued use of ShotSpotter due to a really, really, really high false positive rate. Ouch.

"The cost of investigating a single murder could run to £1m. By contrast, installing the system cost £150,000 and a further £21,000 a year to maintain."

1. That first sentence is highly misleading. Plus it's worded to try to comparitively justify actual costs in the next sentence. :(

2. Are the costs in the 2nd sentence per square kilometer - or total of the entire system covering West Midlands? (which is how big, btw?) Compared to some of the U.S. entities we've all talked about before using this stuff, those UK installation totals seem wildly low... weren't the Long Island counties paying millions? I seem to remember somewhere around $100k/sq mile or something...

If any of you have HBO, watch the Vice episode where they did a good news story on the Camden, NJ situation. They talk to residents about it (not one supported the measure) and mention the Shot Spotter as well. If you want to see a police state in action, go to Camden, NJ.