Mayor Johnson to end ShotSpotter deal after summer, making good on key campaign promise

Mayor Brandon Johnson announced Tuesday that he won’t renew the city’s controversial contract with ShotSpotter, making good on a key campaign promise to do away with the gunshot detection system that has come under heavy fire for allegedly being overly costly and ineffective.

After the Sun-Times reported on the decision earlier in the day, Johnson’s office issued a statement saying the city “will decommission the use of ShotSpotter technology on September 22,” meaning cops will have access to the system throughout the historically violent summer months and the Democratic National Convention.

“During the interim period, law enforcement and other community safety stakeholders will assess tools and programs that effectively increase both safety and trust, and issue recommendations to that effect,” the mayor’s office said.

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Sources said Johnson outlined the plan during a closed-door meeting Monday night with city officials , though Chicago police officials weren’t invited. With ShotSpotter’s roughly $49 million contract now set to expire Friday, the city will apparently have to enter into a new deal with parent company SoundThinking to cover the additional months.

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

Freddy Martinez, a member of the Stop ShotSpotter Coalition, said he believes city officials “got to a point where a decision had to be made, and it was time to make the right decision.”

“I think this took far too long, and I think many of us saw the writing on the wall for months,” Martinez said. “We still have a long way to go. It’s not a complete victory either; we know that there’s a lot of work to do ahead of us with other surveillance technologies. But we’re clearly feeling that a lot of progress has been made today.”

While Johnson had publicly remained tight-lipped about his plans for ShotSpotter since taking office, he vowed to nix the deal as a mayoral candidate and “invest in new resources that go after illegal guns without physically stopping and frisking Chicagoans on the street.”

He insisted the technology is “unreliable and overly susceptible to human error,” adding that it “played a pivotal role” in the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo in March 2021.

Many of those concerns were reiterated by critics of ShotSpotter, who frame it as a costly surveillance tool that has led to overpolicing in minority communities. Proponents argue it’s a lifesaving resource that gives cops another much-needed tool to respond to gun violence.

Last week, the Sun-Times reported the Cook County state’s attorney’s office had conducted a review of ShotSpotter that found the technology had a minimal effect on prosecuting gun violence cases.

ShotSpotter was previously slammed in a May 2021 report by the MacArthur Justice Center at the Northwestern School of Law, which found that nearly 86% of police deployments to alerts of gunfire prompted no formal reports of any crime.

In another scathing report that August, the city’s Office of the Inspector General concluded the technology rarely leads to investigatory stops or evidence of gun crimes.

Meanwhile, Johnson’s hand-picked police superintendent, Larry Snelling, has remained a vocal supporter of ShotSpotter. Last month, Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th) and 12 other City Council member sent Snelling a letter saying the technology was “critical to locating victims, giving first responders the opportunity to render swifter aid and locate evidence.”

Those alderpersons represent wards in ShotSpotter’s coverage zone, which includes 12 of the city’s 22 police districts. They argued funding for ShotSpotter was included in the 2024 budget and urged Snelling to “take all steps necessary to ensure that there is no gap in vital services for the residents of Chicago.”

Taliaferro (29th), a former Chicago cop who chairs the City Council’s Police Committee, said the decision will ultimately “hurt the city,” predicting it will have a damning impact on officers’ response times.

“We have lost an opportunity to get aid to victims if there are shots or there is someone who has been shot,” he said. “We’re losing that opportunity to get them lifesaving treatment as quickly as possible.”

Taliaferro said the number of people calling 911 is “much lower than what this detection system is picking up,” skewing the statistics cited by ShotSpotter critics. He insisted the technology “is very instrumental in keeping our police responsive to the needs of the community, especially when there’s shots being fired in our neighborhoods.”

“Is this technology saving lives? Yes. Are our police officers able to respond to calls of shots fired a lot quicker than using the 911 system? Yes,” he said. “I’m disappointed that we’re getting rid of technology that is actually working as it is designed to do.”

Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th), a Johnson ally and ShotSpotter opponent, credited the mayor “for keeping his campaign promise” while lauding organizers “whose advocacy made today’s sound public safety decision possible.”

“Research has shown that ShotSpotter’s technology does not lead to a reduction in violent crime or gun-related homicides. What it does do is significantly alter police response to ShotSpotter incidents,” Ramirez-Rosa said in a statement. “The tragic killing of Adam Toledo underscored how ShotSpotter harmfully escalates police violence in our communities.”

The mayor’s decision offers the police department “time to transition away from this defective technology while ensuring Chicago joins Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and over 32 other cities that have ended their relationship with ShotSpotter or chosen to not enter into a contract with ShotSpotter,” he added.

Spokespeople for the police department and SoundThinking didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The mayor’s decision to phase out ShotSpotter comes less than a week after the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability hosted a public forum that devolved into a shouting match between supporters and critics of ShotSpotter.

Anthony Driver Jr., the commission president, said his “biggest concern” has never been “whether ShotSpotter stays or goes.” It’s whether Chicago neighborhoods are “prepared for this change.”

“If the mayor has made the decision to keep this until September, it gives us a chance to get prepared by engaging the community, by coming up with a plan,” Driver said.

“I’m sure the mayor, the superintendent and other community stakeholders have to have a role in figuring out how to get prepared,” he added. “That’s what we’re going to try to figure out in that time frame. … I’m not going to weigh in one way or another on whether he should change his mind or not. This just gives everybody a chance to get prepared.”

Former Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck spent five months as Chicago’s interim police superintendent under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, putting him in a unique position to comment on the gunshot detection system Johnson has now decided to relinquish.

“CPD has integrated ShotSpotter into their strategic centers in the districts, and I think they’re going to be losing a tool that has strong value,” Beck said. “Without something to replace it or without an alternate plan that will make up for its loss, I wouldn’t have done it. … It hurts their effectiveness.”

The mayor’s office said the police department will now “work to revamp operations” within those technology hubs — known as strategic deployment support centers — and “implement new training and further develop response models to gun violence that ultimately reduce shootings and increase accountability.”

“Moving forward, the city of Chicago will deploy its resources on the most effective strategies and tactics proven to accelerate the current downward trend in violent crime,” the mayor’s office added. “Doing this work, in consultation with community, violence prevention organizations and law enforcement, provides a pathway to a better, stronger, safer Chicago for all.”