HOLYOKE — Amid a spate of shooting deaths in the city, Holyoke’s City Council is considering whether to accept a grant that would allow police to purchase a controversial gunfire-location technology.
At a meeting of the City Council’s Finance Committee on Monday, police Lt. John Hart answered questions about a $64,850 federal grant the department hopes to accept to purchase ShotSpotter technology for one square mile of the city. ShotSpotter is a California company whose technology claims to quickly pinpoint where gunfire occurred using microphones placed across a particular area.
The meeting came after a weekend when the Paper City experienced its third shooting death so far this month. In an email Monday, police Capt. Matthew Moriarty said there was a slaying on Saturday in the city, though he did not provide any further details. A spokesperson for the Hampden district attorney’s office did not respond Tuesday to questions about the homicide.
From the beginning of this year through July 21, Holyoke police have responded to 115 reports of “shots fired,” 61 “gun calls,” four incidents of people injured by gunfire and two other gun homicides, according to data provided by the department.
It was in that context that city councilors heard from Hart and ShotSpotter salesman Jason Silva on Monday evening, presenting the police department’s plans to use the technology to more quickly respond to gunfire in a one-square-mile are of the city. Hart and Silva did not specify where that area would be, but promised to provide councilors a map before their next meeting on the topic. Silva said the area is where about 65% of known gunfire incidents have occurred in Holyoke.
ShotSpotter has been on the Holyoke Police Department’s wish list for a while, given the large number of shootings in the city every year. In 2021, the department unsuccessfully sought $198,000 in federal coronavirus relief funds from the city in order to pay for two years of ShotSpotter for a total of two square miles in the city. Hart told councilors that the two square miles would cover approximately 90% of all gunfire reports in the city.
Hart explained that ShotSpotter costs $49,500 for one year of coverage for one square mile. Of the $64,850 “Project Safe Neighborhoods” grant, another $5,850 would go toward training officers to use the software and $9,500 would be used to integrate already existing city cameras into the system, allowing them to rotate and zoom to specific areas if shots are detected on the ShotSpotter microphones.
The federal grant through the U.S. attorney’s office does not require a matching contribution from the city. Hart said that the Police Department is hoping, though, that there will be an annual line item in the department budget going forward for the technology. ShotSpotter continues to own the technology.
Hart explained that when police get calls about shots fired — and often, those shots are never even reported — a caller might give the wrong location because they couldn’t figure out exactly where the shots came from.
“With the ShotSpotter, it’s going to give us a pinpoint location,” Hart said. Silva, for his part, used the analogy of “spear fishing” rather than using a net.
Some have questioned the technology’s accuracy, though, and criticized the technology as being overwhelmingly deployed in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods..
A study by the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, for example, analyzed Chicago’s use of ShotSpotter. That study found that during a 21-month period ending April 14, 2021, 89% of ShotSpotter deployments turned up no gun-related crime and 86% led to no report of any crime at all.
“The ShotSpotter system in Chicago prompts thousands of deployments by police hunting for gunfire in vain,” Jonathan Manes, an attorney with the center who led the study, said in a statement when it was released. “This system puts police on high alert and sends them racing into communities; but almost nine times out of 10, the police don’t turn up evidence of gun crime or any crime at all. It creates a powderkeg situation for residents who just happen to be in the vicinity of a false alert.”
The MacArthur Justice Center also found that ShotSpotter sensors are disproportionately installed in already heavily surveilled communities of color.
Holyoke wouldn’t be the only area police department to use ShotSpotter; the Springfield Police Department makes use of the technology.
Wanting further information on the technology, city councilors tabled the agenda item until the Finance Committee’s next meeting.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.