At least nine Massachusetts cities use a crime prevention-device called ShotSpotter.
Those cities are:
- Boston
- Cambridge
- Somerville
- Worcester
- Lawrence
- Brockton
- New Bedford
- Holyoke
- Springfield
(Northeastern University also uses the device on its campus.)
ShotSpotter is sold and operated by Sound Thinking, Inc., a California-based company.
When a municipality contracts with Sound Thinking, Inc., the company installs hidden audio sensors throughout the city’s high-crime areas.
When a sensor detects a percussive blast, the sound is filtered through a proprietary algorithm which determines whether the sound was a gunshot or something else.
If the algorithm detects a gunshot the sound is then reviewed by a human technician with some sort of firearms expertise.
If the technician concludes that the sound was in fact a gunshot, Sound Thinking, Inc. alerts the police and provides them with the shot location.
Although ShotSpotter is in the news on an almost daily basis (at least where I live just outside Springfield), its scientific accuracy has not yet been put to the test through a Daubert-Lanigan hearing in Massachusetts.
At such a hearing the Commonwealth would need to prove that ShotSpotter’s technology is reliable “by demonstrating that the underlying principles or methodologies are generally accepted by the relevant scientific community.” See the Notes to Section 702 of the Massachusetts Guide to Evidence.
Both the Appeals Court and the Supreme Judicial Court have suggested that a Daubert-Lanigan hearing on the ShotSpotter is needed: “a Daubert-Lanigan hearing should be allowed if so requested to further inform the court regarding retrospective forensic use of ShotSpotter technology.” See Commonwealth v. Rios, 496 Mass. 11, 27 and Commonwealth v. Ford, 100 Mass.App.Ct. 712.