'People will die': Tech CEO warns as Chicago mayor battles city council over ShotSpotter system

CHICAGO, IL - Chicago's Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson is facing an Alderman's revolt in the City Council with members of the body moving to rip power over ShotSpotter, the gunshot sound detection system, away from him. The CEO of the SoundThinking, formerly known as ShotSpotter, Ralph Clark warned that "people will die," and referred to the "very small but loud" movement as being the "first cousin to defund the police."

Johnson, a vocal proponent of efforts to defund the police, promised to cancel the city's contract during his campaign for office. He's indicated that he intends to follow through with the promise on November 22nd, according to The Chicago Sun-Times.

Clark told the outlet Tuesday, “If you have ongoing, chronic gunfire where there are gunshot wound victims and 80 to 90 percent of the time there’s not a 911 call, police and first responders aren’t gonna be able to get to those victims.
 

“Sometimes you have gunshot victims that are bleeding out...We know that time is literally tissue. It’s really important that you get first-responders there very quickly to be able to save lives.”

BLM Chicago and #StopShotSpotter have alleged that the system is "racist technology," with the former posting to X that it is "bad built, expensive, racist technology and we don’t need it!"

In a 2023 lawsuit Williams v. City of Chicago, 22 CV 3773, opponents to the system alleged that "The City of Chicago only deploys ShotSpotter across the South and West sides of Chicago, blanketing ShotSpotter sensors over the twelve police districts with the highest proportion of Black and Latinx residents and the lowest proportion of White residents," according to The MacArthur Justice Center.

MacArthur Justice Attorney Jonathan Manes claimed, “Only residents in predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhoods have to contend with the burden of thousands of unnecessary and potentially dangerous police deployments. Only their neighborhoods get saddled with inflated statistics about supposed gunfire. At the same time, there is no evidence that the ShotSpotter system makes communities safer or reduces crime.”

Chicago's 17th District Alderman David Moore told The Sun-Times that he has "about 30 votes," or four more than needed, to pass a measure requiring the mayor to obtain the council members approval before eliminating the ShotSpotter system in any Ward where an Alderman wants it to remain. It will also mandate the Chicago Police Department to gather more data to justify a long-term contract with SoundThinking.

Discussing the opposition, Clark told reporters, “A lot of their motivation has to do with…looking at things through too fine of a criminal justice lens and really ignoring the victimization that takes place with respect to gun violence.

“A number of them...come from the defund the police movement and this is just a…first cousin of defund the police. Take away their technology tools…There’s an element or piece of that that is very challenged by innovation and technology. They’re afraid of it and scared of it. You put all of those things together and that’s what we have with these very few, but loud folks...organized to kind of push back and conflate a whole bunch of issues.”

A City Council vote is expected on Wednesday. On Tuesday the former Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson adamantly defended the system before the press with the Save ShotSpotter Campaign gathered at City Hall, according to newsbreak.

Responding to criticism that CPD failed to accumulate the correct data on ShotSpotter, the former superintendent said, "In hindsight yes, I wish we had thought to gather that evidence in the beginning. But we just never thought we would run into a situation where we would consider getting rid of it." 

Ald. Brian Hopkins supported keeping the system, saying, "When it does save a life—and it does—and when it does result in an arrest - and it does - that is the value of this system."

"It saves lives," Moore told reporters.