Shotspotter not a tool ‘to convict somebody’
Shotspotter is not used as key evidence in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, but rather as a means to speed up police response to gunfire so officers can gather evidence first-hand, police and local prosecutors say.
Among other things, an Associated Press investigation called into question the use of Shotspotter’s artificial technology as key evidence in the conviction of Michael Williams in Cook County, Illinois, court for a fatal Chicago shooting.
The head of the gun unit for the Franklin County Prosecutor’s office said he and other longtime staffers can’t recall a case in their office that hinged on Shotspotter as key evidence or in which the reliability of the technology had became an issue.
“It’s not been used as a tool to convict somebody or go into the court and say, ‘Here’s the evidence,’” Assistant Prosecutor John Gripshover said.
The gunfire locator technology is currently installed in three-square-mile areas in four Columbus neighborhoods: Linden, the Hilltop, the Parsons Avenue corridor on the South Side and the Near East Side.
Columbus police Cmdr. Robert Strausbaugh, who oversees the major crimes unit, said patrol officers respond to a Shotspotter alert of gunfire the same way they would to a 911 call or any other report of shots being fired. He also said that while some Shotspotter reports may turn out to be a car backfiring or fireworks or other loud noises, the officers respond with the same urgency in case they are actually gunshots.
In some neighborhoods, Shotspotter may be the only alert police get about gunfire as residents may hear shots so often they don’t call or are too afraid to call, police and prosecutor say.
Officers will collect any shell casings found in the area of a Shotspotter alert, even if there is no visible victim, to submit as potential evidence that can help tie multiple crimes together or trace firearms down the line, Strausbaugh said. In general, patrol officers and detectives see Shotspotter as a tool to aid their investigations, not a primary crime-solving method.
“It’s something that speeds up the process to get an officer into the area,” Strausbaugh said. “If you see somebody walking away, you can’t stop them unless they meet other requirements. Being in the area of a Shotspotter alert does not automatically qualify you for being stopped.”
The technology uses microphones placed strategically in the neighborhood of focus and picks up acoustics, allowing the identification of gunshots. Shotspotter sends an alert back to police within 60 seconds with a location and, if relevant, the number of gunshots detected.
Columbus police personnel are aware of some of the locations of the devices. However, Shotspotter installs them and conducts the maintenance on the microphones, as well as updates to the software used by officers and dispatchers. The locations are not made public in order to prevent people from trying to disable or damage them.
The value of the technology, Gripshover said, is to alert officers to the scene of a shooting more quickly than a 911 call can.
“It can get officers to a scene faster, hopefully when witnesses or whoever was shooting is still in the area,” he said. “A lot of times 911 calls don’t get made in some of these neighborhoods.”
If an arrest or indictment results from officers responding to a Shotspotter alert, it’s based on evidence officers observe or gather after they arrive at the scene, not the alert itself, Gripshover said.
“I’m not aware of anybody (in the Franklin County prosecutor’s office) having tried a case where Shotspotter was used as actual evidence,” he said.
It is generally mentioned in cases only as the reason an officer responded to an area, Gripshover said, or “it might be mentioned as part of the reason that we stopped (the defendant) to begin with.”
Former longtime Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’brien said the only specific case he can recall where Shotspotter received attention was that of Charles A. Mccoy Jr., who pleaded guilty in 2005 to involuntary manslaughter and 10 other counts related to a series of highway shootings that left one woman dead and terrorized central Ohio motorists for months.
During the investigation of that case, Shotspotter technology was installed in Franklin and other central Ohio counties in hopes it would help apprehend the shooter. It was the first use of the technology in Ohio.
Although Shotspotter did not result in Mccoy’s arrest, O’brien said there was testimony at trial of Shotspotter “picking up shots fired and a bad muffler, which we found (Mccoy’s) vehicle had.”
The trial ended in a hung jury, but Mccoy eventually agreed to a plea deal that included a 27-year prison sentence.
“We would never have relied just on Shotspotter to take someone’s liberty away on a homicide. It’s ludicrous to just use a tool to make an entire case around,” Strausbaugh said.
Strausbaugh said there have been multiple examples of people surviving gunshot wounds after being found by officers responding to a Shotspotter alert.
In October, Columbus City Council approved $1.13 million in spending to expand Shotspotter into the Near East Side and renew the city’s licensing with the company for 18 months.
Since late 2018, the city has paid about $2.07 million for Shotspotter, which covers about 12 square miles in the city. The city’s contract with Shotspotter details a cost of $65,000 per square mile each year. bbruner@dispatch.com @bethany_bruner jfutty@dispatch.com @johnfutty