Posted on 05/20/2026 3:59:49 AM PDT by Red Badger
Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the home of Harvard University. This was Cambridge last week:
And this was Cambridge on Monday:
A slew of liberal activists descended upon the Cambridge City Council in recent weeks to get the city to disable its gunshot detection devices, which help police pinpoint where gunshots are coming from to better respond to shootings.
Police Commissioner Pauline Wells begged the council on Monday not to deactivate the devices, citing multiple recent cases where lives have been saved due to the system, but to no avail.
More from the Harvard Crimson on April 30:
In a presentation Wednesday, the Cambridge Police Department said ShotSpotter has verified more gunshots than 911 calls have. Police officials also said officers receive ShotSpotter alerts on their phones, allowing them to respond faster 'when seconds can make the difference.'
The Crimson cites three major groups in the nexus of liberal activists who pushed to shut the devices down (they will be turned off in the next 90 days). First are those concerned about privacy, since the audio system is always listening.
This group gets tossed in with another organization that is briefly mentioned by activist Stephanie Guirand, called The Black Response. The Crimson says The Black Response is an "anti-policing organization," which is technically true in that its stated goal is, ahem, "defunding and abolishing the Cambridge Police Department" in order to "uplift black and brown communities."
The third group are those worried about illegal aliens getting deported. Quote:
Spencer Piston, a Boston University political science professor, said ShotSpotter alerts could indirectly increase federal involvement if they lead to arrests. Once a person is booked, he said, their fingerprints are entered into a database accessible to federal agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
'Presumably, this has already happened because ShotSpotter alerts have led to arrests, arrests lead to fingerprints, fingerprints are put into the database, and the database is accessible by ICE,' Piston said.
Piston also argued that ICE could potentially obtain Cambridge ShotSpotter data through SoundThinking, which he said owns the data collected by the devices and could legally sell it.
Wait, you're telling me that if a foreigner gets caught shooting a gun on American streets, that federal agents might want to detain and deport said foreigner? The humanity!!
The reason I mention this to you is to assert that End Wokeness' caption in the video of the council meeting is correct. While the council did not specifically say they were deactivating these crucial devices in order to "protect black residents and migrants," that is actually the thrust of it.
This, of course, means that the criminals in high-crime areas will be free to commit more crimes thanks to the color of their skin and immigration status. Everyone who is not part of these privileged groups will just have to dodge the bullets.
Well done, Cambridge!
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I think I read they approved the removal of the detectors.
Since the June meeting, Guirand said that The Black Response — a Cambridge-based anti-policing organization — held eight educational workshops and conducted six door-to-door canvassing sessions. Her presentation on Wednesday also included the results of two surveys that TBR conducted to gather resident opinions about the technology.
The online survey the group conducted found, with 10 total respondents, that 90 percent of respondents said their biggest issue with ShotSpotter centered on privacy concerns. The organization also administered a physical survey — garnering nine respondents — during their various sessions, finding that individuals have a skeptical attitude towards the way the devices operate.
Stop right there. Only ten people responded? That is NOT a high level of concern, though to be fair few people nowadays respond to pollsters on their personal views, rightly so. Nonetheless, ten is hardly a robust sample. Heck, if 25 people showed up at the Town Council meeting, why weren’t there 25 respondents?
Jerome Filip, a spokesperson for ShotSpotter’s parent company, SoundThinking, told councilors on Wednesday that the possibility that the devices — which are placed at high elevations — are listening to conversations at the street level is “extremely improbable.”
If some municipality installed listening devices and the vendor swore it was “highly improbable” citizen conversation were being recorded, id expect there to be a sudden rash of vandals trashing the gear.
WTG, dummies. You're enabling more crime, more shooting and more victims losing their lives. Great job!
I suspect real estate kingpins don’t want the value of their property falling due to the data showing where the shootings are. Ooops
Norfolk VA’s crime rate has dropped .
They have a bunch of Flock cameras , 175 of them
Lowest murder rate in 40 years . 40% reduction in car thefts in first year.
In a surveillance society you can never have enough surveillance. Flock came, gunshot spotters, unless you change the culture and societal values returning to a law abiding citizenry you’ll never have enough surveillance.
“Can we program it to only pick up white shooters?”
Memphis did this too. Installed in 2021. Turned off immediately.
” The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. ... We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984
I’ve never been on the scene when shots were fired, but I saw some pretty compelling video of ShotSpotter (or some similar technology) in action when I served on a grand jury two years ago. It also involved the only actual killing for which we were shown video.
The incident happened at a small neighborhood mini-mall off Benning Road or maybe East Capitol Street in Anacostia. The neighborhood looked ok in the video, and I must have driven past the strip mall many times as those are major roads to various destinations over yonder thataway.
So: a row of small convenience stores with a big parking lot between the shops and the street. I wouldn’t have hesitated to stop and run in for something if I were driving by.
The victim exited a store and moved towards a car, presumably his own vehicle. The perp was lurking between some parked cars several spaces down. He stepped out from cover, gun drawn, fired multiple rounds, and killed the victim. He immediately set off running around the corner of the little mall, across a grass back lot towards the cover of single family homes with some fences and trees. He never made it.
Within a couple of seconds of the first shot being fired, sirens were going off from all directions. Police cars were arriving within a few more seconds. As he saw the police cars approaching, the perp tossed something into a storm drain along the street. (The police subsequently retrieved the gun from the drain.) He was pursued and captured before he was out of sight.
The little shopping mall had surveillance cameras, and this was all captured on camera.
The ShotSpotter system had pinpointed the location and alerted all police in the vicinity within seconds.
The victim was black. The perp was black.
ShotSpotter clearly discriminates against black people. I am glad Cambridge, Massachusetts liberals are able to make these fine distinctions.
We of the grand jury were not that sophisticated. We immediately returned an indictment. But that’s because we were racist, white supremacist buffoons — including the several black people on the grand jury.
May one of the council members or their family be next.
The things liberals do for a vote may cost you your life.
Liberals secretly actually want blacks to keep killing each other. That’s the only thing that makes sense.
I don't know how different a gun sounds if held sideways while shooting.
You can buy those little party poppers 3 for $1 at dollar stores. When you set them off they register as gunshots in the police detection systems. Try it, and say hi to the responding officer. The systems don’t work.
The state should be asked to revoke the local law and if the state will not do it declare both the city and the state as “disabled” governments (governmental units intentionally not carrying out their basic responsibilities to citizens and taxpayers) requiring federal intervention.
100% on the money.
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