Antioch Council to consider purchasing gunshot detection and location system tonight
“To aid in solving and reducing violent crime” – City staff report
97% accuracy rate
By Allen D. Payton
During a special meeting, tonight, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022, the Antioch City Council will consider approving the purchase and deployment of a gunshot detection and location system for specific areas in the city. The meeting replaces the regular meeting scheduled for last Tuesday, Nov. 8 since it was Election Day.
According to the staff report on the item (#6 on the agenda), the ShotSpotter, Inc.’s Respond Services technology is designed to give the Antioch Police Department an effective tool and resource to aid in solving and reducing violent crime in the city. It will operate 24 hours a day and allows officers to respond precisely to the location the gunshots originated.
It’s a cloud-based service, and the agreement includes warranty, support, repair, and maintenance of the ShotSpotter owned acoustic sensors that will be installed in the coverage area. The Antioch Police Department, in collaboration with the ShotSpotter Development Team, identified three critical coverage areas in the city.
The council is being asked to approve either a five-year purchase agreement for deployment of the technology for a total of $1,060,000 or $1,410,000 depending on the service selected. Funding is proposed to be from “re-allocating police department salary savings in the Fiscal Year 2022/23 General Fund budget to fund the first-year cost per the agreement selected.”
The first proposal offers a coverage area of three-square miles, which identifies two of the most critical areas in the City. The second proposal offers a coverage area of foursquare miles, which identifies an additional area of coverage in southeast Antioch. The first proposal is considered the priority, and the second proposal would be the next priority.
According to the company’s FAQ’s sheet, ShotSpotter “uses an array of acoustic sensors that are connected wirelessly to ShotSpotter’s centralized, cloud-based application to reliably detect and accurately locate gunshots using triangulation. Each acoustic sensor captures the precise time and audio associated with impulsive sounds that may represent gunfire. This data is used to locate the incident and is then filtered by sophisticated machine algorithms to classify the event as a potential gunshot. Acoustic experts, who are located and staffed in ShotSpotter’s 24×7 Incident Review Center, ensure and confirm that the events are indeed gunfire. They can append the alert with other critical intelligence such as whether a fully automatic weapon was fired or whether there are multiple shooters. This entire process takes less than 60 seconds from the time of the shooting to the digital alert popping onto a screen of a computer in the 911 Call Center or on a patrol officer’s smartphone or mobile laptop.”
Furthermore, “The ShotSpotter system is highly accurate at detecting outdoor gunshots. In 2019 the system had a 97% aggregate accuracy rate across all of our customers including a very small false positive rate of less than 0.5% of all reported gunfire incidents.”
See how the ShotSpotter system works in a company video.
The meeting begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Council Chambers at City Hall located at 200 H Street or can be viewed on Comcast channel 24, AT&T U-verse channel 99, or live stream at www.antiochca.gov/government/city-council-meetings.
See the complete agenda packet, here.
the attachments to this post:
ShotSpotter Incident Review Center
ShotSpotter Antioch map Option 2 addition
ShotSpotter Antioch map Option 1