Gunshot can be nail in criminal’s coffin

WHAT glitters beneath the City of Gold is an urban sprawl marked by fear of violence and crime. The annual crime statistics jointly published by the South African Police Service (SAPS) and Stats SA reveal that gun-related crimes (such as murder and cash-in-transit heists) have increased. Despite the large infrastructural and technological improvements made across the city, crime rates in Johannesburg remain incredibly high.

But thanks to the efforts of Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba, the city already has in place significant technological infrastructure and there is broad-based connectivity across the city. Yet at present the uptake of these resources in the fight against urban crime is lagging behind cities in both the developed and emerging worlds.

There is some local evidence of the positive impact that the effective use of smart technology could have in the detection and prosecution of gun crime in South Africa. In Cape Town, ShotSpotter (a real-time gunshot detection technology that relies upon sophisticated acoustic sensors to trigger gunshot alerts) has been deployed in the fight against gun crime in areas that historically experience high incidents of shooting.

In June this year, gangster Virgil Koopman was convicted in the Wynberg Regional Court based on a key piece of evidence: CCTV footage provided to the SAPS by the City of Cape Town’s Strategic Surveillance Unit (SSU). ShotSpotter was able to provide the SSU with detailed information, including where the shots had been fired. This was cross-referenced against the location of CCTV cameras in the same area, leading to the shooter’s arrest.

Gunshot detection technology provides a digital alert that not only identifies the exact location of a gunshot but more vital data such as the number of rounds and the type of weapon fired. And it does so in real time. Within just 60 seconds, the technology can detect and confirm the sound of a gunshot and send an alert to the nearest authorities with the precise details of the incident: the pinpoint location, calibre of gunfire and the number of rounds fired. Officers can be instantly dispatched to a specific location to assist communities in crisis and gather evidence. Critically, the information can be used to predict trends, allowing authorities to anticipate and even avert future shootings.

This technology has a rapidly increasing footprint in America. Some 90 cities across the US – including San Diego, Chicago, New York and Denver – are increasingly reliant on it to assist their police departments in effectively policing gun crime.

The time has surely come for our safety and security leaders to engage with technological advances to make our fight against crime more efficient and effective. Policing requires not only more manpower, but technological innovation too. Affordable technological solutions that can be strategically deployed to provide real-time data to enforcers, free of the inaccuracy and uncertainty of human senses and bias, the potential benefits of such an investment cannot be overlooked.

The backbone of a technological crime-fighting eco-system is already in place across large areas of Johannesburg and initial indication from pilot studies carried out in gang-infested Westbury reveal that, once ShotSpotter tech is in place, Johannesburg policing authorities can make a meaningful impact towards reducing gunfire almost immediately.