The Detroit Police Department’s (DPD) contract for ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection surveillance system, is up for renewal in July 2026. This contract was supported by DPD and the Board of Police Commissioners (BOPC) in 2022 and as of September 2025, the BOPC’s endorsement of the renewal is uncertain. Here are three reasons why Detroit should join other cities that replaced ShotSpotter with interventions that prevent rather than respond to gun violence in their communities.
- ShotSpotter creates an illusion of safety, not actual safety.
The company that makes ShotSpotter is a private company with no obligation to share accurate information about its effectiveness with the public. This company has previously resisted transparency and, unfortunately, DPD has not been much clearer. According to the BOPC in 2022, DPD has never violated its ShotSpotter policy, which requires quarterly reports that “summarize key statistics” including the amount of confirmed and false gunshot detections, DPD’s response time to alerts, and recovered weapons from the scene. However, these reports have never been available to the public. Further, weekly reports about ShotSpotter’s use are unreliably published on the BOPC’s website and contain no information that enables the public to actually evaluate how it makes our community safer. The DPD says that ShotSpotter helps them recover guns from the streets, but how does that prevent gun violence if the gun has already been used in a crime? We also cannot identify how many times ShotSpotter has helped secure justice for gun violence victims, as both DPD and the Wayne County Prosecutors Office have confirmed that they do not track ShotSpotter-related convictions. This means that there is no way for Detroiters to truly measure ShotSpotter’s success in responding to gun crime in our community.
- ShotSpotter is Unreliable, At Best
The limited evidence that we do have about ShotSpotter shows that this costly technology is not effective. ShotSpotter causes more unfounded police responses compared to 911 reports, no improvements in case clearance, nor any reduction in gun crime. For example, over 50% of alerts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, produced no evidence of any crime. In St. Louis, Missouri ShotSpotter led to a decrease of about 25% in citizen 911 calls, even though 911 reports are significantly more likely to produce evidence of a crime than ShotSpotter. All three of these cities discontinued their ShotSpotter contracts due to its poor performance.
With the money it spent on its most recent ShotSpotter contract, DPD could have contracted with its community instead to build more effective and sustainable violence prevention programs.
- Solutions to Gun Violence Exist That Are Less Costly and More Effective
Community initiatives that target the causes of violence––Community Violence Interventions (CVI)––have been shown to actually prevent gun crime rather than responding to it. One local CVI implemented in 2023 successfully reduced gun violence and strengthened communities. Participating community groups used outreach efforts, education and literacy services, and conflict resolution trainings to target the root causes of violence. Since this program was publicly funded, data is widely available about its effectiveness. In all, each group achieved between 30%–70% reductions in violent crime in their neighborhoods. By terminating ShotSpotter, the DPD could invest at least $7 million (the most recent contract cost) into protecting Detroit’s CVI from looming budget cuts.
Unlike ShotSpotter, evidence from other areas also supports the value of CVI. Baltimore’s strategy, for example, is similar to Detroit’s CVI and reduced gun homicides by 22% and non-fatal shootings by 19%, which is a fifty-year record low for the city.
Data from the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform shows that the average cost of a single gun-related homicide is roughly $625,000, much of which is funded with tax dollars. ShotSpotter merely alerts police to shootings and does not ease the burden on public funds, unlike community prevention initiatives that prevent gun crimes from happening in the first place.
Ready to take action towards a better gun violence strategy?
As a community, we cannot rely on ShotSpotter to keep us safe from gun violence. We do not have enough reliable information about how effective it is in Detroit, nor can we track how it reduces gun crime or helps hold offenders accountable. Detroit should join other cities that have cancelled ShotSpotter due to its poor performance and failure to decrease gun crime. Instead, we deserve a sustainable and transparent CVI approach designed by our communities, for our communities.
How To Take Action!
Public comments about ShotSpotter’s renewal will occur in early 2026. Learn more about how to make your voice heard by visiting https://detroitcpta.org/education-resources/ and https://detroitcpta.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/ShotSpotter-is-Not-the-Solution.pdf
