"Suit targets city's gunfire locator pact" by Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | July 22, 2008
It was introduced with fanfare in Boston last fall, a $1.5 million network of sophisticated acoustic sensors that identifies and pinpoints gunshots to help police catch shooters. Boston is one of 30 cities to have installed ShotSpotter, and police say it has led to several arrests.
Who do you think paid for that, readers (as another school is shuttered)?
Cities where ShotSpotter has been installed include Chicago, Gary, Ind., Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., according to the company.
ShotSpotter relies on the principle of acoustic triangulation to pinpoint gunfire, according to the website for the Mountain View, Calif., company. Using a continuous feedback loop and sensors attached to rooftops and telephone poles, the system reports gunfire to police dispatchers within seconds.
These the same kind of computer programs that claim Oswald shot Kennedy and Connolly with a magic bullet?
Grain of salt, please!!
The patent said the system was designed to quickly locate gunmen who would otherwise elude police if officers had to wait for residents to call. The researchers cited the sniper killings in the Washington, D.C., area in October 2002 as the type of crime that the technology can help solve.
Makes you wonder (CUI BONO) who was behind all that, doesn't it?
In January 2007, Mayor Thomas M. Menino pushed through an emergency $1.5 million funding order to buy the ShotSpotter system, hoping that the technology would be running last summer in the high-crime neighborhoods of Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury.
But installation was delayed until the fall because city officials and ShotSpotter spent weeks dickering over a contract and then squabbled over staffing to install the project. Boston police officers had to get permission from owners of buildings and other locations to install the noise sensors, and the company said the city needed more officers to speed up the process.
It took a few months for officials to adjust the system so it could distinguish between gunshots and other loud urban noises, including cars backfiring.
PFFFFT!
--MORE--"
