New Jersey police herald gunshot-detection system

[ProSouth]

New Jersey police herald gunshot-detection system

by Sharon Adarlo/The Star-Ledger
Sunday March 22, 2009, 8:53 PM

A few years ago, a man called East Orange police at 4 a.m. claiming he was shot on Evergreen Place. But gunshot sensors, acoustic devices with Spider-Manlike sensitivity to sound, never picked up any noise that resembled a gun. The sensors, however, did detect shots fired a block away on Halsted Street, three hours earlier. That information assisted officers in their investigation of the night's events.

In East Orange, which said it was the first community in New Jersey to get a gunshot-detection system, officials have heralded it as not only a tool for solving crimes, but also as a way to reduce them. The sensors act as a deterrent to persons inclined to fire a weapon indiscriminately because the devices make it easier to get caught, officials said.


Amanda Brown/The Star-LedgerNewark Police officers monitor the cameras throughout
the city at the Community Eye command post in Newark.

In 2003, the city had 73 reported shooting incidents. A year later, it installed the $92,000 gunshot-detection system, which covers 75 percent of the 3.9-square-mile city. Last year, the number of shootings dropped to 27, said Sgt. Andrew Di Elmo, a police department spokesman.

Paterson, Irvington and Newark have followed suit. Once the sensors have been calibrated, which takes a couple months to complete, police expect the devices will notify them of shootings before the first emergency calls arrive. Early notification helps medics respond to the scene quicker and gives officers a head start on finding a gunman.

"The future of policing lies in technology," said Newark Police Director Garry McCarthy, whose $1.4 million system is expected to be completed next month. "Good police work makes a difference in reducing crimes. Technology, whether cameras or gunshot sensors, will help improve our performance."

Gunshot sensors are installed on the top of buildings from where they can pick up the sound of gunfire, triangulate its location and send an alert to the police station. The program will even map out on a computer screen where the shooting happened, said Gregg Rowland, a spokesman for ShotSpotter, the Mountain View, Calif., company that manufactured Newark's sensors.
Rowland said the sensors "learn" to distinguish sounds, from a revolver firing to a firecracker exploding. After they have been calibrated, they are capable of pinpointing a shooting within 25 meters, he said, adding some police departments have reported an accuracy of a few feet.

Nationally, several cities, including Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco and Boston, have installed the sensors, which can cost from $225,000 to $250,000 per square mile.

Newark's system, paid for by the nonprofit Newark Community Foundation, will include 114 sensors over seven square miles, said Peter Lutz, the technology director for the police department. Within that area, a 3-square-mile high-crime zone north of Route 78 will be saturated with 40 sensors, he said.

Installation of the sensors, which began last fall, won't be completed for several weeks, but since November they already have picked up more than 270 gunshot sounds, Lutz said. Not one of those, however, involved an actual shooting, said police, who noted the sensors are still adjusting to the environment and the system is still not fully operational.

In East Orange, Di Elmo said it took about two months after the sensors were installed for the system to be fully operational.

"There will be issues until everything is fully installed," said Di Elmo.
Paterson peppered the city with sensors last year, along with a few dozen cameras, said police spokesman Lt. Anthony Traina. He said they've already begun to work.

On New Year's Day, the sensors alerted officers to a shooting on the north side, Traina said. A 27-year-old Wantage man allegedly tried to rip off a drug dealer and was shot in the shoulder.

"It's certainly a tool that comes in handy not just for police but also for citizens," Traina said. "Once criminal elements know that you can't just shoot guns, it's going to be a deterrent for guys carrying guns."

The devices do have their critics.

Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of police studies at City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, questions whether the cost of sensors is worth it and if they are effective.

"I am skeptical, and they are not cheap," O'Donnell said. "They are packaged as a miracle cure for violent crime, but they are not. In the places they have been installed, I don't see the case made that they achieved significant results, which I define as arrests."

O'Donnell made reference to a Boston Globe article last year that said
the $1.5 million sensor system there has only resulted in 10 arrests.
R. Cory Watkins, a professor at the criminal justice and legal studies department at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, studied the ShotSpotter system for a trade publication and said he found the opposite to be true.

In tests done in 2002, he recently said, Watkins found the sensors could detect gunfire 80 percent of the time and pinpoint where the gunshots occurred with an 84 percent accuracy rate. He said the system is likely even more accurate now, after reviewing other reports about the sensors.
Sensor manufacturer Rowland said the market has proved his product's value.

"If they are not worth the money, then why is it half of our customers are expanding their system?" he asked.