The 40 members of Cambridge’s first-ever Civic Assembly gathered Saturday at King Open School for the second of four scheduled sessions to hear competing perspectives from academics, advocates, community leaders, police and a mother whose son was fatally shot in North Cambridge.
Amid years of debate over privacy and renewed scrutiny of gun violence following the fatal shooting of a city public works employee on July 4, the assembly is tasked with recommending whether Cambridge should continue using the gunshot detection system ShotSpotter and whether to introduce overnight surveillance cameras in public parks.
Selected through a digitized sortition process combining random selection with demographic criteria to broadly represent Cambridge’s population, participants will receive $1,000 for completing all four sessions. Their recommendations to the City Council will be nonbinding.
Does ShotSpotter make Cambridge safer?
Questions raised
The morning began with Nasser Eledroos, a computer scientist and managing director of the Center for Law, Information and Creativity at Northeastern University School of Law, who introduced four questions for evaluating surveillance technologies: What should they achieve, how would they work, what evidence would demonstrate their effectiveness, and do their benefits justify their financial and social costs? “A detection or a recording can be a useful step, but we need to ask what connects it to the result that ends up mattering to us in the first place,” Eledroos said.
Next was Eric Piza, a Northeastern University criminologist and leading researcher on gunshot detection technology. Piza said the technology can alert police to gunfire before 911 calls, help officers locate shooting scenes and increase ballistic evidence collection. In Kansas City, Mo., his research found alerts arrived an average of 93 seconds before the first 911 call.
However, Piza said most studies found no significant reduction in shootings or improvement in case clearance rates, while findings on police response times were mixed. He cautioned against assuming research from larger cities applies to Cambridge. “Does Cambridge, Massachusetts, have a gun violence problem that warrants investment in this technology?” he asked.
That question took on a personal dimension with Joanna Jimenez, whose 21-year-old son, Angel Pupo Nieves, was fatally shot on Clifton Street in North Cambridge in January 2025. His killing remains unsolved.
The hope for safer streets
In tear-choked remarks, Jimenez supported ShotSpotter and questioned why North Cambridge, which has experienced several shootings in recent years, including one near Russell Field last month, falls outside its detection area. Cambridge police analysts previously said ShotSpotter covers 18% of the city’s land area, which accounted for 74% of confirmed shootings between July 2014 and May 2026. The Russell Field area represents a significant concentration of gun violence outside its coverage.
Jimenez urged participants to consider the human consequences of their recommendations. “Let it be about the mother waiting for her child to come home. Let it be about the young man walking down the street who deserves to arrive safely at his destination.”
The morning concluded with Cambridge Police Deputy Superintendent Mike Logan and Michael Monestime, president of the Central Square Business Improvement District, both defending ShotSpotter.
Logan emphasized its investigative value while acknowledging its limitations. “ShotSpotter is just a tool. It’s not the end-all, be-all,” he said. Asked why North Cambridge remains outside its coverage, Logan said the boundaries were established using 2014 gun violence data, but police would be open to expanding them.
Monestime cited recent violence in Central Square, including a fatal shooting in August, another shooting last month and a stabbing the day before the assembly. He argued that public safety is essential to preserving the neighborhood’s cultural life and community. “(Central Square) is a place where people create art and find community,” he said. “And when people feel unsafe, I feel that all of that is at risk.”
Do cameras make parks safer?
After a break for lunch, presentations shifted to overnight surveillance cameras in public parks. Jenny Chung, the assembly’s lead facilitator and a longtime Cambridge Public Schools educator, explained that parks vary widely in size, use, ownership and operating hours, from spaces smaller than an acre to approximately 50-acre Danehy Park. Most are open from dawn to dusk, though some have extended hours. Not all the parks are city-controlled, including state-managed Magazine Beach. The recommendations will apply only to city-controlled parks.
Ben Struhl, executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Crime and Justice Policy Lab, encouraged participants to use a “theory of change,” identifying a problem, explaining how an intervention would address it and measuring its success.
Struhl said research suggests cameras work better when actively monitored or paired with other crime prevention measures. At the previous session, acting Police Commissioner Pauline Wells said Cambridge’s existing public safety cameras are not actively monitored, without specifying whether that would apply to park cameras. Struhl said, “In the research, we see that cameras really don’t seem to do much on their own without something else being associated with them.” Struhl also warned that other government agencies could access surveillance footage for purposes beyond those originally intended. “What is the risk of the government accessing and misusing camera data? That’s really, really worth thinking about,” he said.
Selvin Chambers, executive director of the Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House, noted the dilemma: “For some people, cameras in the park make them feel safe. And then for others, it’s, ‘I like my park, but I don’t want to go there because there are cameras in the park,’” he said. “If there are 1,000 people in favor and 10 people against, who gets to feel safer?”
Standing alongside Chambers at the front of the room, Karim Razzaq, a Cambridge Youth Soccer board member who works in community engagement for Somerville, questioned whether cameras would be the most effective investment without explicitly endorsing or opposing them. Pointing to Russell Field, he suggested better lighting and regular police patrols could reassure residents. “For me, if I saw a camera and if I saw a police officer, I would feel safer if I see a police officer going around,” he said.
What do assembly members think?
Gauging their progress
After the presentations, members broke into small groups to discuss what they had learned and identify outstanding questions. They then participated in a “fist-to-five” exercise, indicating with zero to five fingers whether they had enough information to make an informed decision and how settled they were in their positions.
Hiyab Stefanos, 31, of East Cambridge, said she raised three fingers because she wanted to hear more from fellow assembly members before settling on a position. “I’m not at five because I think that we haven’t really dug into the discussions. I think that’s going to be a huge thing, to hear other people’s perspectives,” she said.
For Livia Jardel, 22, of Wellington-Harrington, the testimony stirred emotions. Jardel grew up with Angel Pupo Nieves, was his classmate at King Open School and remained in contact with him after enrolling at different high schools. She was surprised to see his mother, Joanna Jimenez, address the assembly. “He used to call me his little sister,” she said. “The fact that I’m still here and he’s not, it’s something I think about a lot.”
A stronger
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