this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2025
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[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I'm well aware of shotspotter systems.

with great accuracy and provide rapid response

This is provably false. Shotspotter is incredibly inaccurate, the false positive rate is EXTREME (84% false positive rate). Even when it does correctly detect a gunshot, this information is of almost no value to police. 0.9% of shotspotter detections led to seizure of a firearm and 0.7% of detections led to an arrest. This means that literally over 99% of shotspotter detections are wrong or unhelpful. It's a totally bunk system that does not work and provides no value to a community's safety.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/larsdaniel/2024/12/05/new-study-nypd-shotspotter-gunshot-detection-is-wildly-inaccurate/

The most value shotspotter has to police has literally nothing to do with guns or suppressors. The shotspotter towers can be used as general surveillance of the public, because the microphone systems are able to record human voices, and these recordings have even been used as evidence in court to make convictions.

https://sls.eff.org/technologies/gunshot-detection

It is actually a major waste of police resources as they constantly respond to false positives and dead end leads with no useful information. Shotspotter is so ineffective and wasteful that many cities are canceling their contracts.

https://www.daytondailynews.com/local/dayton-not-renewing-contract-with-shotspotter-program/PYYGLLNVRJGUHEAF4OSJJ7K4NA/

Suppressors would have almost no impact on how effective shotspotter systems are, regardless of the fact they are only 0.9% effective anyway and can't really get any worse, but because the gunshots when using a suppressor are still loud enough to cause hearing loss and would still theoretically be detected by these microphone systems. From the company's own promotional material:

https://www.soundthinking.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/FAQ-June-2019.pdf