ShotSpotter returns, at least temporarily

On Monday Cambridge City Councillors voted 6-3 to temporarily re-activate ShotSpotter, an acoustic gunshot detection software that was used by the Cambridge Police Department for over a decade until its use was discontinued earlier this summer. The issue, which has divided councillors and community members for months, resulted in a compromise: ShotSpotter will be reactivated for 90 days, during which the city will convene a panel of residents who will provide recommendations on whether to continue using the technology.

“We have to have a community conversation that includes a lot of people, especially those most impacted by violence, to discuss balancing the usefulness of technology with the concerns about the overuse of technology,” said Councillor Marc McGovern, who was the lead sponsor on the substituted version of the policy order that passed. He, along with his co-sponsor, Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, voted in favor of removing ShotSpotter earlier this year.

Debate over whether to use the service was reignited following the murder of Xavier Bautista, a Cambridge Department of Public Works employee shot and killed near Sennott Park in the early hours of July 4. The murder occurred about a month after City Council voted 5-2-2 in favor of ordering the Cambridge Police Department (CPD) to decommission the technology in response to public concerns about over-policing and surveillance.

Bautista’s body was not discovered for about an hour after the shooting, when a 9-1-1 call was made. While Acting Police Commissioner Pauline Wells acknowledged during a special meeting July 23 that ShotSpotter is less effective during the 4^th of July due to fireworks, the department still believes that the technology could have helped emergency response. Wells told Cambridge Day after the vote that she was glad to have it back, though she acknowledge that the department knows “it isn’t perfect technology.” However, she noted that “It doesn’t change police work, right? It’s just one tool that we’re going to use, among the things that we can do try to solve an investigation.”

While McGovern said he still doesn’t think that ShotSpotter is effective at preventing violence, he said a community meeting held shortly after Bautista’s death prompted him to consider a different path.

“We heard from a lot of people we haven’t heard from before, who rightly or wrongly, view this technology as a way to keep their community safer,” McGovern said. “That’s why we’re going to do this process, to debate those questions.”

ShotSpotter will not be reactivated immediately, however. It will take time for the system to be restored. City officials said they were unsure if the sensors needed to be reinstalled.

Community disagreement

The meeting began with extensive public comment. Bautista’s fiancé and five-year-old son attended and listened to much of the discussion. Language for the substituted policy order was released partway through the public comment period, so most were unaware of the proposal for the new community process. Many of the commenters spoke against restoring ShotSpotter, including a number who spoke at previous meetings.

One repeat speaker was Gideon Epstein, a policy lawyer for the ACLU of Massachusetts. He said the decision needed to be guided by “how effective ShotSpotter has proven to be here in Cambridge, in consideration with whether you have full control over ShotSpotter data. The evidence on ShotSpotter is not favorable to continue deployment, and it is not a close call.”

One speaker in favor of returning ShotSpotter was especially poignant. “The night my son was murdered, ShotSpotter’s system did not alert police,” said Joanna Jimenez, whose son, 21-year-old Angel Nieves, was shot and killed in North Cambridge in January 2025. His killer has not been caught. Even though ShotSpotter was ineffective in her son’s case, she still supported its use. “We don’t abandon public safety tools because they need improvement. We make them better.”

Many residents spoke against ShotSpotter, but former public officials were primarily in favor of bringing it back.

David Solet, who is running for Middlesex County District Attorney and used to run the county’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, said ShotSpotter had helped him solve a murder case in Everett, by helping police get to the scene more quickly and identifying witnesses and potential suspects.

Former Mayor Ken Reeves implored councillors to take seriously the concerns of residents affected the most by gun violence, many of whom want ShotSpotter back. “Listen to the people who do have the problem, who want your help to not have the problem. It’s no more complicated than that,” he said.

Anthony Gallucio, also a former mayor, told Cambridge Day before the meeting that council should reverse its vote, because “the shooting put a lot of things in context for people.”

Verbal volleys

Debate among councillors remained charged, despite the week-and-a-half since the special meeting where the original version of the policy order was discussed, then charter-righted by Councillor Ayah Al-Zubi. Her move prompted Councillor E. Denise Simmons, the policy order’s lead sponsor and one of the two votes against removing the technology in the first place, to exercise her own charter right on the remaining policy orders on the agenda and promptly leave council chambers.

Simmons ultimately voted in favor of McGovern’s substitute order, but warned that community engagement needed to be “authentic” and “not because it looks good, because it’s a shiny bauble.”

The city will have to design a process for creating the citizen assembly. The policy order mentions that residents will be selected for the assembly by a lottery system that will emphasize drawing from areas of the city most impacted by gun violence. Subject matter experts may also be consulted in the process. McGovern suggested providing stipends to residents who participate. But many of the details will have to be worked out by the City Manager’s office.

“A lot of the idea behind assemblies as more deliberate democratic model is rooted around how we bring together a better representation of our community,” Huang said. That could be a tall order to achieve in 90 days. “I think most of the models for resident assemblies have a much longer timeline,” Huang said.

Some councillors were skeptical about the timeline, as well.

“If this is what the will of the council is, I will vote for it,” Vice Mayor Burhan Azeem said. “But I just think that we’re going to end up in the same place in 90 days.”

The discussion became barbed at points, with councillors on both sides of the question expressing everything from frustration to disdain.

Councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler said he was happy to have the community process but disagreed with the necessity of keeping ShotSpotter sensors running in the interim. He also criticized councillors for writing off people, including residents of color, who have organized against ShotSpotter in the past. “I think we should be really careful in saying that some resident voices are not ‘authentic.’”

Councillor Patty Nolan introduced an amendment to McGovern’s substituted policy order to keep ShotSpotter turned off while the community deliberation process was ongoing, but it failed 3-6.

Some observers thought McGovern’s policy order would also fail, based on the intensity of debate. But in the end, it had the votes. McGovern and Siddiqui were joined by Azeem, Flaherty, Simmons and Zusy. Al-Zubi, Nolan and Sobrinho-Wheeler voted against.

The council also revisited three policy orders charter righted by Simmons were also revisited during last night’s meeting, all having to do with public safety topics.

Two of the policy orders requests the City Manager to provide a progress report on the Community Safety Department’s implementation of a list of recommendations released in February as well as a report on other violence prevention strategies. Both were adopted unanimously.

A policy order investigating whether security cameras that would be running overnight above Cambridge city parks was referred to the to-be formed citizen’s assembly. That vote was also unanimous.

Tavishi Chattopadhyay contributed to this story.

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