BUFFALO, N.Y. — The Masten District may soon be a testing ground for ShotSpotter as Common Council Member Ulysees O. Wingo Sr. and ranking members of the Buffalo Police Department renew their push to bring it to the Queen City.
ShotSpotter is an acoustic detection system that the company says can identify and triangulate where gunfire occurs. According to Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia, these types of incidents often go unreported because they depend on people calling 911.
“We don't know how many calls are not being made about shots fired,” Masten District Council member Ulysees Wingo said.
$250,000 for a full-fledged ShotSpotter system was cut from the city budget earlier this year after pushback from activists and concerns about its effectiveness were raised. Our partners at Investigate Post have reported on several studies that found the service to be ineffective.
While ShotSpotter will not be implemented across the entire city, Wingo told 2 On Your Side on Wednesday that talks to host a three to six-month pilot in his district are underway. This story was first reported by The Buffalo News.
Where the “acoustic detectors” would be located has not yet been determined but will be based on existing gun data from Buffalo Police.
“This will give us a more accurate assessment of how many shots are actually being fired, or what sounds could be interpreted as a shot fired,” Wingo said.
Since the budget fallout, Wingo said he has continued to field requests from residents calling his office and speaking at block club meetings. He feels the decision to remove ShotSpotter from the city budget was unfair to the people truly impacted.
“How can you live in an area where there is virtually no violent crime, where there are no shots-fired calls made, then dictate to the City of Buffalo,” he said.
The pilot would come at no cost to the city, according to Wingo, who shied away from setting a timeline of when it would be implemented. Approval would likely require a vote by the Common Council.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia has been a vocal supporter of the technology and told 2 On Your Side on Wednesday that any chance to improve police response times could mean life or death for many shooting victims.
ShotSpotter could not comment on the details of their potential pilot with the City of Buffalo, but in a statement it touted that its technology is used in over 125 cities. That statement read in part:
“With a growing list of over 125 cities using ShotSpotter and a 98% renewal rate, we’re confident that our technology will help make communities safer by enabling a faster, more precise police response to gunshot incidents than 911 to help save the lives of victims and find critical evidence.”
One such city already using this acoustic detection system is Syracuse.
“So we've had the technology for several years now,” Syracuse Police Lieutenant Matthew Malinowski said.
Malinowski told 2 On Your Side that ShotSpotter helped his department identify 379 shots fired incidents from January to August of 2021. This year, following an expansion of the system into a new part of Syracuse, he said during the same time period that number increased to 511.
“There were a lot of shots fired that we didn't even know were occurring and you wouldn’t know the location until you found casings. This really puts officers at street level,” Malinowski said.
Back in Buffalo, Antonio Robinson, who lives off Main Street in the Masten District, told 2 On Your Side that while he thinks the technology is a good idea, if the program moves beyond a pilot he does not want to see neighborhoods singled out.
“Crime happens everywhere,” Robinson said. “It's a good idea to test it. Let's see what happens, but hopefully this won't be the only area."