Posted on 11/04/2013 7:35:29 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
When Absalom Jordan hears the crack of gunfire outside his home in Southeast Washington, he reacts in an instant. “You get away from the windows and get down,” the 72-year-old said. “I have learned to live with it.”
Police are listening as well. Rooftop sensors monitor his neighborhood around the clock for the distinctive bang of a gun. The inconspicuous devices have logged hundreds of incidents over the past eight years near his apartment as part of a gunfire surveillance network called ShotSpotter.
About 39,000 separate incidents of gunfire have been documented by ShotSpotter’s unseen web of at least 300 acoustic sensors across 20 square miles of the city, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. The data, obtained through a public-records request, offer an unprecedented view of gun crime in a city where shooting a firearm is illegal in virtually all circumstances.
The gunfire logged by ShotSpotter overshadows the number of officially reported felony gun crimes by more than 2 to 1. More than one-half of the incidents detected by the network have involved multiple rounds of gunfire. In 2009 alone, ShotSpotter captured more than 9,000 incidents of gunfire. That number has fallen by 40 percent in recent years as gun homicides have declined sharply.
.... ....When ShotSpotter’s remote monitors — microphones and circuitry in a weatherproof shell — detect a loud noise, a central computer program analyzes the acoustic signature, providing a more accurate location than people usually can. It classifies the source, pinpoints the suspected location to within a few yards and notifies police. City personnel verify the alert and dispatch officers.
“ShotSpotter gives you a specific location,” said Kristopher Baumann, president of the D.C. police union. “You can go there and get out of the car. You can find a victim or shell casings.”.......
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
39,000 detections in eight years? That’s almost 5,000 per year, or more than ten per day.
Sounds like those draconian DC gun laws are really working.
Maybe they could upgrade the system to recognize the sound of a bullet impacting a person, as well. That way, they’d know to the inch and to the millisecond where and when each one of their citizens was shot and killed in that hellhole of a district. For whatever that would be worth. No mention, though, of how the technology reduces crime. Pity.
How many of those shots were cops shooting dogs?
Come to think of it, they could further upgrade the system to have robotic drones that, upon hearing gunfire, would instantly calculate exactly where they needed to be, and then raced to that location and drew chalk lines around the body, before returning to their bases and becoming ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice once again.
Geez I wonder why the MSM is reporting this and so many other shootings when the president is trying to get rid of gun ownership, Wally?
SNORT!
These things must be broken. Guns have been outlawed in D.C. Oh, yeah. Right. Street drugs have been outlawed too. That didn’t work either. Too many tons of drugs being smuggled in from other countries. Guess the drug dealers can just toss a ton or two of illegal guns in with the coke, crack, and meth.
Only the law-abiding abide by the law, so I guess that means the law-abiding are at the mercy of the armed drug dealers and other armed criminals in D.C. That is of course unless you are a member of the U.S. Politburo, in which case you have 24 hour armed guards to escort you anywhere you go. So, as usual, the laws made for the peasants don’t affect the elite.
No kidding. That’s a lot of shots for a gun free zone. Or else their acoustical tracking system is in need of some serious calibration. Car door slams shut. GUNSHOT! Kerry farts. GUNSHOT! difi puts her finger on the trigger. GUNSHOT!
I thought ShotSpotter was that blacklight thingy they use to inspect rooms on Hotel Impossible...
can’t be...illegal to own a gun in DC. data must be faulty.
Is a detection a shot or a group of shots? How many are gangs/criminals messing with the cops?
They won’t have to outlaw guns. Technology will make them obsolete.
Don’t think so! What the commies at the Wapo don’t realise is that in a dumb attempt to stir up an effort for new gun laws, they have just reported on empirical evidence that those stupid laws don’t work!
Firecrackers?
Wonder how many of them are firecrackers set off just to mess with the system and the police...
Unfortunately, the WaPo and similar outlets have also dumbed down the FSA soldiers so much that they won’t be able to grasp your excellent point.
Firecrackers?
Vehicle backfire?
Cocaine sneeze.
Okay. And?
The article had all kinds of numbers and data. But, it lacked one very important piece of information - how many active shooters has this system taken off the streets in the last four years or so?
The purpose of this exercise is to reduce gun centric violence not to collect shell casings and help gun shot victims.
Loads of data as to where and when gun shots are the most common. But, has the DC police department made any effective use of this information? Or, is it just eye wash?
Like many programs and systems that have sprung up in the last 20 plus years this one is all splash and no cash. Loads of information and processed factoids for the nightly news 10-seconds of filler, but no convictions.
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