Cambridge Day does not endorse candidates or positions. Views expressed in this column are those of the writers.

The killing of Xavier Bautista has shaken Cambridge communities, and as Cambridge residents we grieve alongside his family. Too many neighbors, particularly in Cambridge’s Black and brown communities, have experienced similar trauma from violence and feel abandoned and unheard. 

In recent days, there has been speculation about whether the acoustic surveillance technology ShotSpotter could have helped Bautista, and whether the City Council should consider reinstating it.

We share the desire to find the best solutions to save lives and prevent violence, and that goal animates our opposition to ShotSpotter. The evidence clearly shows that ShotSpotter does not improve public safety or prevent gun violence. Cambridge residents in the Port and other neighborhoods that disproportionately experience violence deserve investments in public safety that have been proven to prevent violence and lift up communities that have faced ongoing disinvestment, rather than failed technology with real human costs.

Some have claimed the City Council acted without evidence when it voted to remove ShotSpotter from Cambridge, choosing “myths” over data. The opposite is true: The Council had reviewed years of testimony — including from directly affected community members — research, and legal analysis when it voted to stop using ShotSpotter. 

Consider Chicago’s long-running, now-discontinued use of ShotSpotter, which has been subject to rigorous academic analysis. Contrary to claims that ShotSpotter gets officers to the scene faster, a University of Chicago analysis of response-time data found the opposite: in the Chicago neighborhoods that used to have ShotSpotter, police response times to high-priority calls got faster, not slower, after the system was removed — improving by roughly four minutes on average. The Chicago Police Department also reported 550 false negatives in 2023 — each one representing a time when ShotSpotter failed to alert despite active gunfire. In 2022, ShotSpotter also missed a Chicago shooting involving the discharge of 55 rounds. Finally, there is substantial research showing that when ShotSpotter was active, shootings and gun-related homicides in its coverage area did not decline. 

In other words, ShotSpotter does not prevent violence. What’s more, case clearance rates — the rates at which police solve cases where gunshots were fired — did not improve in areas that used ShotSpotter. Leading researchers have determined ShotSpotter does not protect communities from violence. For these reasons, cities like New Bedford, Fall River, Atlanta, Durham, Portland, Ore. and Seattle have rejected ShotSpotter technology.

Closer to home, data from Cambridge indicates police have wasted precious resources chasing after alerts that led nowhere when ShotSpotter was active here. 

A 2021 memo from Cambridge’s former police commissioner documented a 65% false positive rate over six years of ShotSpotter activity in Cambridge. More recently, city councilors cited a local 82% false positive rate. That means in an overwhelming majority of instances when ShotSpotter alerted Cambridge police, officers were deployed and found no evidence of gunfire. These figures are consistent with false positive elsewhere, including Dayton (95%), Chicago (89%, 90%), New York (82%), New Bedford (76%), Boston (70%) and Fall River (50%).

False alerts don’t just waste officer time and resources. They can pose a serious danger to community members, especially to young people. After all, police responding to a ShotSpotter alert are looking for a shooter. These high-stress, high-stakes situations can and do lead to real harm: wrongful arrests, racial profiling encounters with police and even police shootings of children. 

Instead of turning to surveillance technology that evidence shows does not reduce violence, our policymakers and budget writers should redouble efforts to sustain and grow programs with proven results.

Among these proven solutions are:

These efforts will mean fewer conflicts ever reach the point of a gun being pulled. 

The City Council didn’t arrive at its decision to reject ShotSpotter on a whim, nor did it prioritize privacy concerns over community safety. Like the many other communities that have in recent years ended their relationships with the company due to unreliability and a failure to deliver on public safety goals, the decision in Cambridge was made based on a robust factual record after years of hearings, community input, and research in response to a campaign led by and for affected community members. That’s exactly how it should work in a democracy.

Tragedy rightfully makes us reach for solutions. One death from gun violence is one too many. Every community in Cambridge, and in particular neighborhoods that disproportionately experience gun violence, deserves sustained community investment dedicated to ending gun violence — investment in people, in neighborhoods, in mental health and in the local organizations already doing the work block by block.

Gideon Epstein is Technology for Liberty Policy Counsel at the ACLU of Massachusetts. Katy Naples-Mitchell is Justice Policy Counsel at the ACLU of Massachusetts. Both are residents of Cambridge.

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