Article by samantha jones

Samantha Jones

The Shots Heard Around The World

SST Inc.

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Most gunfire doesn’t get reported to police, ...

It’s

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And that’s the thing ShotSpotter changes

CEO Ralph Clark talks about why ShotSpotter matters

10:45 A.M. on a Wednesday when an alert appears on a computer in the Incident Review Center located in Newark, CA. Liz Jones, one of the reviewers, clicks on the alert and listens to the sound of multiple gunshots heard from several different sensors located in Fresno, CA. “A total of 16 rounds were fired according to our gunshot detection system, and all of those occurred in approximately a minute to a minute and a half,” said Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer (Fox News).

When the reviewer sent the location of the shootings and number of rounds fired, Fresno officers were alerted within a matter of seconds

and able to quickly locate the shooter. “He was in custody within 4 minutes and 13 seconds,” Dyer said Wednesday at a news conference where he played audio clips of the ShotSpotter technology.

Unfortunately, the gunman did end up shooting at four people, killing three and missing the fourth. By having this system, Fresno police were able to get to the scene faster and apprehend the suspect before anyone else was hurt. Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer confirmed that, “without the ShotSpotter system, more people may have been killed” (Fox News). ShotSpotter was founded in 1996 when Dr. Robert “Bob” Showen, a brilliant mathematician and engineer/

scientist had a vision to use technology to help reduce urban gun crime, save lives and improve communities struggling with gun violence. He had recognized that a local community was dealing with gun violence and had this idea that he could set up acoustic sensors in and around this particular neighborhood or community to alert police when guns were fired.

With over three decades of acoustic and geophysics research experience, he was able to turn his vision of helping police curb gunfire into a reality. In 2014 the Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law Association (SVIPLA) selected Bob Showen, SST Founder and Chief Scientist as “Inventor of the Year,”

How does it help the police?

1. Real-time access to maps of shooting locations and gunshot audio 2. Actionable intelligence detailing the number of shooters and the number of shots fired

3. Pinpointing precise locations for first responders aiding victims, searching for evidence and interviewing witnesses.

Dr Robert “Bob” Showen Founder and Chief Scientist of SST Inc for his invention of ShotSpotter’s gunshot detection location technology.

Despite some seeing it as “Orwellian,” Dr. Bob’s patented gunfire detection location technology has helped local law enforcement in more than 90 cities across the United States and the world to reduce gunfire violence over the past decade. In 2015 SST, Inc. aggregated the gunshot data from 62 ShotSpotter cities out of all those monitored in the U.S. With all of the data, there were three major findings.

The first finding was that in 46 cities where ShotSpotter data was analyzed for year over year trends, the overall median reduction in gunfire was

12.8%. Within this data, it was also found that 36 cities saw reductions in their rates of gunfire, 19 cities saw reductions greater than 20%, and 6 cities saw reductions greater than 33%. The second finding was that gunfire incident rates per square mile decreased in every region of the country except for the Midwest. The third finding revealed that 54,699 separate gunfire incidents were reviewed and published in 2015.

These total separate incidents add up to 150 incidents of gunfire per day or 6 incidents every hour. The overall gunfire summary for the year was that there were 54,699 incidents, 165,531 3

Incident Review Center in Newark, CA

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shots fired, and the busiest day being December 25 where 266 incidents in total were reviewed in one day, 39 in one city alone. The worst month for a city was May of 2015 where 422 incidents/square mile were reviewed. The single busiest hour for a city was November 11 at 1:00 AM with 24 incidents of gunfire. Finally the busiest hour of the week was recorded to be Saturday 2:00 AM to 3:00 AM with a whopping 978 incidents. By looking at all of this data it is clear that Dr. Bob has succeeded in what he set out to do in the first place, being to help reduce gun violence and he has done just that. In addition to reducing gun violence in the U.S.

ShotSpotter has recently deployed their technology in Cape Town, South Africa. They are also looking into the deployment of the system for different uses in South Africa including anti-poaching efforts in Kruger National Park to help the rangers deal with rhino poachings.

According to Mr. Clark, “Dr. Bob has now moved on to acquire technology to be able to detect blast fishing events which happens a lot throughout the world but certainly a lot in SouthEast Asia where people will take sticks of dynamite or explosive things and throw them in the water as a very efficient yet very destructive way to to able to capture fish.” In the years coming,

ShotSpotter is likely going to be all over the world. Ralph Clark has a vision for how ShotSpotter is going to grow but there are always a couple of people skeptical of microphones being put in their neighborhoods without a choice. Some people will even go as far to say, “the officials will have you believe that this little bit of freedom you are giving up is all in the great name of public safety.

Still a many others feel that they are witnessing an Orwellian 1984 happening right in our very neighborhoods” (James Jeb). Now I’m sure those people have their reasons why they would refer to ShotSpotter as an “Orwellian 1984”, but if they knew that two

years later that very ShotSpotter system would allow for the Fresno police to locate a gunman who went on a shooting spree killing three people and detain him in a matter of minutes, I think they would have felt differently. Another instance when ShotSpotter has proved its worth was in Hartford, Connecticut. In 2011 when the purchase of ShotSpotter technology was announced, Corey Brinson, the criminal defense attorney in Hartford, let everyone know his opinion. He said, “I would think $150,000 for the technology is a poor investment, [...] It’s actually a waste of resources on top of a very expensive technology” (Brinson).

Even though Brinson expressed his opinion, the City Council still decided to move forward with the technology.

Last month, ShotSpotter was able to assist in an arrest when “they responded to 17 Sanford Street on two Shot Spotter activations with one round each around 4:52 a.m. Once police arrived, they found a male, who they later identified as 22-year-old Cedano Brownswell of Newington.

Brownswell was detained for investigative purposes and officers conducted a pat down for their safety. Officers found a .380 Diamond Back handgun with five live rounds in the magazine, 3.1 ounces of Crack Cocaine, and two live .45 caliber rounds on Brownswell” (News 8). Not only did Shotspotter help take this man off of the streets, but it helped to secure a firearm and an illegal substance from the man. Mr. Clark goes on to

explain how he would like to see the company expand in the coming years by saying: “Our markets a very interesting market and we think in the U.S. there’s probably about 1500 cities that represent what we would describe as our total available market also known as TAM and right now with you know kind of 90 or so customers we’re not very well penetrated into that 1500 TAM so we take a very deliberate steady

deliberate approach to try to bring on new customers. So what’s most important for us is not growing fast but growing deep and what I mean by that is getting the right customer with the right kind of mindset that really wants to use ShotSpotter the right way which typically is a very comprehensive way in dealing with gun violence and those are the customers we’re attracted to. And even if it means growing more slowly our belief is that when we align ourselves with the right customer situation we can have that customer for a long period of life so

mathematically the way I look at the market is not only the number of customers but it’s how long you have the relationship and if we can extend the relationship from say 5 years to say 10 or 15 years we’ve doubled the size of the market or tripled the size of the market even though technically the way most people look at markets it might look like it’s only 1500 so I’d rather have a thousand customers for you know 10 years versus you know 10 thousand customers for 1 year.”

Since this is a marketplace that they have designed and created, they have zero competitors allowing them to take their time in expanding and getting around the whole world. Ralph Clark also added on that ShotSpotter reminds him “of the parable of the clever fox and the hedgehog, and the saying goes the clever fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one thing one big thing and I’d like to think this company for me is a hedgehog. We know one thing but we know it uh the thing that we know is really really big and we know it really really really well, [...] so my vision for the future is you know frankly kind of doing the same thing but doing it better and doing it in many many many more cities and helping these communities and neighborhoods have some sense of normalcy because they don’t have to deal with gun violence.” Even as ShotSpotter grows the end goal will remain the same and that is to help end gun violence not only in communities struggling with it but once and for all.

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Work Cited

Berman, Beau. “FOX CT Investigation: Is Costly Gunshot Detection System Worth the

Cost?”FOX 61, FOX 61, 11 June 2013, fox61.com/2013/05/22/fox-ct-investigationis-costly-gun- shot-detection-system-worth-the-cost/. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017.

Blonstein, Cailyn. “Hartford Police Find Gun, Narcotics through Shot Spotter.” WTNH

Connecticut News, News 8, 26 Mar. 2017, wtnh.com/2017/03/26/hartford-police-findgun-narcot ics-through-shot-spotter/. Accessed 27 Apr. 2017.

Clark, Ralph. Personal Interview. 8 March 2017.

Hunt, Jonathan, and Allison Barrie. “Fresno Shooting Rampage: How Gunfire Detection

Technology Alerted Police.” Fox News, FOX News Network, 19 Apr. 2017.

Job, James. “Activists Protest Shot Spotter Technology In Fresno, CA.” The Fifth Column, The

Fifth Column, 2 July 2015, thefifthcolumnnews.com/2015/07/activists-protest-shotspotter-tech nology-in-fresno-ca/. Accessed 25 Apr. 2017.

Jones, Elizabeth. Personal Interview. 26 March 2017.

Showen, Robert. Personal Interview. 8 March 2017.

“ShotSpotter Gunshot Detection and Location Services.” ShotSpotter Gunshot Detection and Location Ser vices, 25 Apr. 2017, www.shotspotter.com/. Accessed 25 Apr. 2017.

“SHOTSPOTTER FOUNDER & CHIEF SCIENTIST BOB SHOWEN NAMED ‘INVENTOR OF

THE YEAR’ BY SVIPLA.” SHOTSPOTTER FOUNDER & CHIEF SCIENTIST BOB SHOWEN NAMED “INVENTOR OF THE YEAR” BY SVIPLA, ShotSpotter, 3 Dec. 2014, www.shotspotter. com/press-releases/article/ shotspotter-founder-chief-scientist-bob-showen-named-inventor-of-the- year-b. Accessed 25 Apr. 2017.

“Fresno shooting rampage: How gunfire detection technology alerted police.” Fox News, 19

Apr. 2017, www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/04/19/fresno-shooting-rampage-how-gunfire-detection- technology-alerted-police.html. Accessed 25 Apr. 2017.

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BIO

Samantha Jones is a 17 year old Junior at Los Altos High and Freestyle Academy. After school, she spends her time playing on the Varsity Softball team at Los Altos High School.

When she is not on the field, she is helping to take care of her one-year-old niece at home. She hopes to one day go into a math or engineering field in college.

Special thanks to: Ralph Clark, Dr. Bob, Liz Jones, Freestyle Academy, Mr. Greco and Mrs. Parkinson.

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