SEATTLE — Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell recently promised swift action to reduce what he's called an “awful epidemic of gun violence” in the city.
Is gunshot detection technology a possible solution? It's the question city council members mulled this week. Should Seattle implement ShotSpotter?
On Tuesday, the City Council budget committee discussed whether it should use about $1.5 million to put ShotSpotter on city streets or intersections.
Council members passed an amendment put forth by Committee Chair Teresa Mosqueda that would require a racial equity toolkit analysis, which would include public hearings, to identify impacts on communities of color. Council members rejected a motion from Kshama Sawant that would have cut funding for ShotSpotter.
The committee is expected to vote on the proposal next week before it goes to the full council.
“Gun violence is at epidemic proportions,” said Larry Jackson, an executive with SoundThinking, which owns the ShotSpotter product. “We have an AI component that listens to those sounds.”
The technology is designed to differentiate the sound of gunshots from fireworks or the backfiring of a vehicle so that police can get there quickly.
“By triangulating that information we can pinpoint, within a close proximity, where the shots were actually fired,” said Jackson.
He said employees of the company work as middlemen to vet the sounds detected and assess whether to forward them to the police.
“It’s important to get shell casings, get information, get evidence, to start the process of starting to solve that crime,” said Jackson.
At a public hearing Monday, Victoria Beach, who leads the Seattle Police Department’s African-American Community Advisory Council, said she supports implementing the product.
“A lot of the people that think they speak for us, they haven’t sat with the weeping parents," Beach said. "I don’t say ‘cry’ anymore. They weep. I’ve heard it, I’ve been to the funerals. I’m tired of it."
But it’s a controversial topic.
One public testifier said, “ShotSpotter should not be funded… instead address the root causes of harm in our community.”
Councilmember Lisa Herbold, representing District 1 in Seattle, told KING 5, “My concern with ShotSpotter is it actually diverts necessary police resources, away from the interventions that are necessary for police.”
She added, “We have seen cities such as New Orleans, Dayton, Ohio, Charlotte, Trenton, in recent years, cancel their contracts with ShotSpotter. And we've heard police chiefs in different cities across the country themselves lead the charge to end contracts with ShotSpotter.”
She said she is working on proposing funding that would expand a victim services program that is run out of Harborview.
“There's a high likelihood that those people are going to be involved in additional gun violence, and so we have had a program working with King County and Harborview to provide wraparound services to the victims of gun violence and the family members of victims of gun violence,” said Herbold.