Chicago Police Department Goes High-Tech to Fight Rise in Killings

cageymaru

cageymaru

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Chicago has a very serious illegal gun violence epidemic plaguing the city. To curb the rising murder rate, will be expanded into poor neighborhoods to identify where these shootings occur with extreme precision. It has the ability to triangulate where shots were fired with great precision.

Shotspotter technology currently can tell where a weapon was fired, how many bullets were fired, the quality of the shots, and how far apart each shot was. The increased accuracy of the information is pertinent in sending officers out to the affected area. Citizens don't even need to call in to report a shooting now. The number one crime deterrent is the fear of being caught and Shotspotter's technology is at the cutting edge of making cities a much safer place. This testimonial is from San Francisco, but is applicable to any US city.

The tools will be used in impoverished neighborhoods in the city's south and west edges where a disproportionate amount of deadly violence occurs — and where the rise in the homicide rate has been most concentrated. The move fits a broader strategy of focusing efforts on the relatively small number of people who commit violent crime and the limited number of places where it erupts.


Leave the politics out of the thread. Please! This technology can really help crackdown on crime and help the police. Please no politics.
 
Wierdo said:
Yep, treating symptoms. It's not a bad idea if it helps catch criminals better, but it's not gonna make these problems go away if not combined with better efforts to tackle issues such as poverty and employment opportunities/conditions for example.
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That's the underlying issue that has to be tackled. As you said this will make citizens live in a safer environment so those changes can occur.
 
Man I'm proud of you'll. Best discussion so far. Thanks for respecting the forum's rules.
 
Wierdo said:
Yep, treating symptoms. It's not a bad idea if it helps catch criminals better, but it's not gonna make these problems go away if not combined with better efforts to tackle issues such as poverty and employment opportunities/conditions for example.
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This is nothing more then treating the symptom, rather then addressing the root causes.
 
If you are not discussing the Technology aspect of this, you can expect to be banned or warned.
 
On a more serious note it sounds like cool technology, but one would think that the shell casings/pool of blood/dead guy would be a pretty good indication of where the shooting occurred.

Makes me think of the old "When seconds matter, police are only minutes away"

Response time for notifications from the system are the only thing that's going to make an impact.
 
rgMekanic said:
On a more serious note it sounds like cool technology, but one would think that the shell casings/pool of blood/dead guy would be a pretty good indication of where the shooting occurred.

Makes me think of the old "When seconds matter, police are only minutes away"

Response time for notifications from the system are the only thing that's going to make an impact.
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So all they really have to do to defeat this system is have a bunch of people fire blanks at multiple locations at the same time or even a few seconds to minutes apart. Seems like something super simple to do as far as gang related shootings go.

Will make for a great number of wild goose chases at the expense of tax payers.
 
cyclone3d said:
So all they really have to do to defeat this system is have a bunch of people fire blanks at multiple locations at the same time or even a few seconds to minutes apart. Seems like something super simple to do as far as gang related shootings go.

Will make for a great number of wild goose chases at the expense of tax payers.
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Well to be honest criminals aren't going to be firing blanks. Now they could open fire at multiple locations, but the system should triangulate all of them. The system seems sound if you watch the video. Not saying that it's foolproof; it seems to be working in other cities and has given positive results so far.
 
cageymaru said:
Well to be honest criminals aren't going to be firing blanks. Now they could open fire at multiple locations, but the system should triangulate all of them. The system seems sound if you watch the video. Not saying that it's foolproof; it seems to be working in other cities and has given positive results so far.
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Blanks are cheaper.. and there will be no slugs for the police to run through ballistics.

I was expecting the system to triangulate all of the guns being fired.

What happens if you get system alerts at 10-20+ locations all within a few seconds/minutes? How do you choose where to go? You have no idea which alerts, if any, are real shootings.
 
This tech will be only as good as the police and prosecutors that gather and process the evidence. If it helps catch the folks doing the crimes and get them off the streets, Good Stuff. Will it be perfect? Of course not. But given the shooting rate in Chicago, perfection is the enemy of progress.

One thing that worries me is the 4th bullet point - "Layering that analysis with another predictive program that identifies people most likely to commit —or be the victims of — gun violence." So will Chicago authorities now contact people that the programs predict will commit a crime before they do so? Could very easily turn into Bad Stuff.
 
I'm in Central IL in Peoria, and we have Shotspotter. Overall it seems to work excellent for a small city, but I would have doubts on the resources and infrastructure required for larger cities.
 
Technology issues: there will be ways to create false-positives. Starter pistols, sure. Firecrackers. Hi-end boom boxes.

Techno-social issues: they are deploying microphones. Microphones that can not only hear sounds, but isolate their location. Once you have a location, you can use post-hoc beam forming (similar to what is used in phased-array radars or long-baseline interferometry) to increase the SNR at that location. Which means in many cases, you'd be able to process the recorded audio streams to pull out was was said at that location before and after the time of the shots being fired.

But you don't have to wait for shots fired. Pick a location, do the beam forming, listen in on people. Probably without a search warrant, since it's a public conversation.

Not a fan.
 
Dead Parrot said:
This tech will be only as good as the police and prosecutors that gather and process the evidence. If it helps catch the folks doing the crimes and get them off the streets, Good Stuff. Will it be perfect? Of course not. But given the shooting rate in Chicago, perfection is the enemy of progress.

One thing that worries me is the 4th bullet point - "Layering that analysis with another predictive program that identifies people most likely to commit —or be the victims of — gun violence." So will Chicago authorities now contact people that the programs predict will commit a crime before they do so? Could very easily turn into Bad Stuff.
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Minority Report anybody?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/
 
cyclone3d said:
So all they really have to do to defeat this system is have a bunch of people fire blanks at multiple locations at the same time or even a few seconds to minutes apart. Seems like something super simple to do as far as gang related shootings go.
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pcgeekesq said:
Technology issues: there will be ways to create false-positives. Starter pistols, sure. Firecrackers. Hi-end boom boxes.
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Both incorrect about this system as it matches the shots recorded to audio finger prints on file to specific calibers.
 
This does absolutely nothing to increase my interest in visiting the Windy City.
 
Ranulfo said:
And that can never be faked? How good is their data on those "finger prints"? Did they test it with every barrel, weapon type etc.? Every suppressor and its characteristics?
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Exactly.

And what about calibrating the sensors/system to account for different areas (echoes, through walls, through different types of walls and whatever else could alter the sound before it gets to the sensors)?
 
Monkey God said:
Laws and technology will never solve social and cultural issues.
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I beg to differ...

latest
 
cageymaru said:
Leave the politics out of the thread. Please! This technology can really help crackdown on crime and help the police. Please no politics.
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Twitter is also an interesting technology that can affect society.
 
jardows said:
As a firearms enthusiast, I can say with great assurance, that the sound profile of a particular caliber depends on many factors, including specific load used, type of firearm used, and barrel length. A "hot" load of .45 ACP will sound much different than a basic load. You can get a .45 with 2-6" barrel lengths, and the report will be much different. You can get a carbine that fires .45, and it will sound much different. You can even get a revolver that will fire .45ACP, and due to the blast containment, that will sound different. Each one of these is a .45, but to a detailed digital recording profile, could well be detected differently, or not be detected in the system as it is an unrecognized sound profile.
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You would very correct. But I would not assume that the company doing this technology does not understand that.
 
so what is the tech behind this? The solution cannot be to set up microphones in neighborhoods.

/BigBrother
 
jardows said:
As a firearms enthusiast, I can say with great assurance, that the sound profile of a particular caliber depends on many factors, including specific load used, type of firearm used, and barrel length. A "hot" load of .45 ACP will sound much different than a basic load. You can get a .45 with 2-6" barrel lengths, and the report will be much different. You can get a carbine that fires .45, and it will sound much different. You can even get a revolver that will fire .45ACP, and due to the blast containment, that will sound different. Each one of these is a .45, but to a detailed digital recording profile, could well be detected differently, or not be detected in the system as it is an unrecognized sound profile.
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Bingo. Plus shotspotter is not new, been around for hell... I want to say a decade or more in some areas. Hell, Oakland, CA has considered getting rid of theirs a few times over the years(they've had it since 2005 or 6 if I recall?) because the results(next to none) have never justified the cost(which isn't even really that high) and they aren't the only ones. The fact is that while this technology sounds great, it's far from perfect, has many false positives, and still doesn't actually do anything about the crime because even if it does detect something and officers are dispatched... the perps are going to be long gone in the 3-10 minutes(3 minutes would be an amazing response time for any PD in the US, and unrealistic, 5-6 is pretty good assuming an officer wasn't already basically around the corner) it would take for the cops to arrive. Sure, it would mean that crimes in areas that may otherwise go un-reported get noticed, but it doesn't actually change anything in the long run.

And yes, regarding the report of firearms... they can claim they made recordings of various calibers all they want, but porting, muzzle devices, barrel lengths, operating method(like a delayed blowback vs. recoil operated), bullet weights, powder charge, indoor vs outdoor, all sorts of variables affect the report of a firearm to the point where it's absurd to consider having a database of every possible way a firearm might sound.

Then there is the previously mentioned concern about having microphones operated by a government agency everywhere.
 
jardows said:
As a firearms enthusiast, I can say with great assurance, that the sound profile of a particular caliber depends on many factors, including specific load used, type of firearm used, and barrel length. A "hot" load of .45 ACP will sound much different than a basic load. You can get a .45 with 2-6" barrel lengths, and the report will be much different. You can get a carbine that fires .45, and it will sound much different. You can even get a revolver that will fire .45ACP, and due to the blast containment, that will sound different. Each one of these is a .45, but to a detailed digital recording profile, could well be detected differently, or not be detected in the system as it is an unrecognized sound profile.



Yes.
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Firing a weapon involves more sounds then just the report. The round makes noise traveling through the air. If the round breaks the sound barrier, that is also a different noise. Yes, there will be differences but several of these factors taken into consideration can help identify just what is going on with reasonable levels of accuracy. And there is nothing wrong with a report that says a probable .40 cal or possible hot .45 cal.
 
J-Will said:
so what is the tech behind this? The solution cannot be to set up microphones in neighborhoods.

/BigBrother
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The ones I've seen are mounted on traffic signals, small boxes with most likely cellular antennas. Not sure how capable they are for recording voice, though.
 
cyclone3d said:
Exactly.

And what about calibrating the sensors/system to account for different areas (echoes, through walls, through different types of walls and whatever else could alter the sound before it gets to the sensors)?
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Like, how many cars are parked on the street, where they are parked, and how big each one is?
Also, ever notice how the sound in a movie theater varies a lot depending on the number of people in the theater? A gunshot in the middle of a big crowd will not sound the same as a gunshot when that crowd isn't there, even if everything else is the same.
 
joecop120 said:
The ones I've seen are mounted on traffic signals, small boxes with most likely cellular antennas. Not sure how capable they are for recording voice, though.
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My guess would be that unless you can record voice frequencies, you won't get a good enough recording of the gunshot to distinguish it from other noises. SO odds are, the boxes can record voice just fine.
 
pcgeekesq said:
My guess would be that unless you can record voice frequencies, you won't get a good enough recording of the gunshot to distinguish it from other noises. SO odds are, the boxes can record voice just fine.
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I'll ask my buddy that works for the city about this. Maybe he knows a bit more than me.
 
jardows said:
Just like the companies selling technology to track shell casings from each firearm, that have sold some states on the technology, hence the requirement that every new handgun purchased come with a fired casing. Not a single crime has been solved using this data, but the companies selling the program and technology still push it.


We are talking about using the technology to solve a crime. There is no realistic way that sound profiles could be used to pinpoint the exact weapon used, without having that exact weapon in house to record its sound profile.
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This technology is about reacting to imminent and ongoing threats to community safety, not about solving crimes. Not sure where you got that this was a crime "solving" technology.
 
cageymaru said:
Agreed! But it can help to make law abiding citizen's lives safer. The politics aspect I'd rather not get into.
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Technology can yes but new laws generally do not. Criminals are criminals because they ignore laws. They don't care about the new or the old. All the new ones do is generate a potential extra line on the list of charges and more revenue for the prison industrial complex.

Madoc said:
Chicago doesn't have a gun violence problem. They have a thug and murderer problem. Guns are tools. Tools are things people use. Thus, people are the problem there, not guns.
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Exactly! We need to re-educate our society from the bottom up. If children are never taught to respect others as much as themselves this problem will never go away. We're so entrenched in the society of the self we're almost blinded to the reality that each of us needs to think globally instead of singularly.

As to this tech I'm interested in hearing what "shot quality" is...
 
Wolf-R1 said:
Technology can yes but new laws generally do not. Criminals are criminals because they ignore laws. They don't care about the new or the old. All the new ones do is generate a potential extra line on the list of charges and more revenue for the prison industrial complex.


Exactly! We need to re-educate our society from the bottom up. If children are never taught to respect others as much as themselves this problem will never go away. We're so entrenched in the society of the self we're almost blinded to the reality that each of us needs to think globally instead of singularly.

As to this tech I'm interested in hearing what "shot quality" is...
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It was in the video. Found it. 1:35 into the video.

 
Wondering how the new silencer regulations will affect this technology.

Also, would changing up between sonic and subsonic ammo make a difference in the efficacy of such sensors?
 
Chas said:
Wondering how the new silencer regulations will affect this technology.

Also, would changing up between sonic and subsonic ammo make a difference in the efficacy of such sensors?
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I hadn't heard of new regulations concerning silencers.
 
This is a very good technology because it is highly specific. There are other great technologies but people in the USA consider them to be too much of a invasion of privacy. Since this is only listening and cannot do much else it looks like it will be more socially acceptable.
 
Merc1138 said:
So it doesn't solve crime(I don't think anyone really thought it would), it doesn't stop crime(simply reports it), and doesn't prevent crime from happening in the first place. Basically it doesn't do much. Like I said previously, if a shooting happens, and even if cops can get to the scene within 3 minutes(which would be miraculous considering the national average response time is 10 minutes), the crime has already happened, and the perpetrators have already left. The reality is that police departments like Chicago already know where these crimes occur on a regular basis, and simply having automated reporting of gun shots(even if it does work accurately) doesn't do anything to abate the actual problem.
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OK.
 
cyclone3d said:
Blanks are cheaper.. and there will be no slugs for the police to run through ballistics.

I was expecting the system to triangulate all of the guns being fired.

What happens if you get system alerts at 10-20+ locations all within a few seconds/minutes? How do you choose where to go? You have no idea which alerts, if any, are real shootings.
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I am thinking that most shooting are a little more spontaneous and there is a lot less planning going into it than what you are thinking.

Even if you have someone you know you want to ventilate, I think it's usually more of a "when you see this dude ...." instead of "let's go get this dude .."

Still better, we don't have to guess about it. It already has a track record.
 
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