Gunshot Sensors Spot Shooters Before 911

[wew3]

http://www.ien.com/product-developme...ers-before-911

Gunshot Sensors Spot Shooters Before 911

These sensors know when (and where) a shot is fired outdoors, but they are expensive.


Last week, 39-year-old Kori Ali Muhammad was arrested within minutes of shooting three men to death in California. He was apprehended in 4 minutes, 13 seconds, but it wasn't because of a 911 call. Actually, before the first 911 call even came in, the authorities were alerted by ShotSpotter Technology, which gave them Muhammad's location within a couple of feet.

When a shot is fired outdoors, it’s picked up by ShotSpotter sensors that are mounted to lampposts and telephone poles. The company’s software triangulates and pinpoints the precise location of each round fired within seconds, to the street address. According to the company, the information is sent to an Incident Review Center for data processing where a gunfire and acoustics expert analyzes the data and qualifies the incident.

Once validated, an alert is sent to dispatch centers, and directly to field personnel through any computer or mobile device with access to the Internet. And this all happens in less than a minute.

The system can even determine the type of weapon used, the number of shooters, and, if they are on the run, where they are headed, and how fast they are going.

According the AP, the technology was developed 20 years ago, but wasn’t widely adopted until 2011. It’s now used in 90 U.S. cities, including New York and Chicago, but it is pricey. The subscription-based service costs $55,000 to $95,000 for each square mile, per year.

Now, for those of you with privacy concerns, the manufacturer says that the system is designed to ignore speech, however such recordings have been used in court cases in the past.

Still, you cannot deny that Kori Muhammad could still be on the run today if it wasn’t for the technology.

This is IEN Now with David Mantey.

[Wildbill990]

Crazy shit. A little too big brothery IMO even though it has clear benefits. Wonder how it would respond to a suppressed gun or knife, crossbow, etc...

[NShortino]

Crazy shit. A little too big brothery IMO even though it has clear benefits. Wonder how it would respond to a suppressed gun or knife, crossbow, etc...

These have been around for a while, and I think that was one of the concerns that some anti politician brought up relating to the Hearing Protection Act, saying that the shot spotters wouldn't work properly if people were using suppressors. I'm not sure how true that is, especially given the source, but I'm curious how suppressors would effect the system or its accuracy.

I think some cities around here have these systems set up. I guess there's one quick way to find out...

[Marcus99]

Pittsburgh has this in some neighborhoods.

[bogey1]

Paid informants are cheaper.

[Statkowski]

Pittsburgh has this in some neighborhoods.

Gee, I wonder which ones.

[Marcus99]

Gee, I wonder which ones.

The bad ones hahaha Homewood, East Hills, Belmar and Lincoln-Lemington according to this article from 2015: http://www.wtae.com/article/shotspot...rhoods/7469717

[Emptymag]

And what do you mean by "bad"?

[Marcus99]

And what do you mean by "bad"?

No offense, but I don't think they just picked names out of a hat. Possibly it had something to do with logistics of where the system would be most effective, but I would like to think that incidents of shootings has something to do with it also.

[dkf]

I saw on the news Harrisburg was putting something like this on street lights.