A year after the Johns Hopkins University implemented an electronic gunshot detection system around its campus, Baltimore police are trying out the technology in an area where it is likely to be more regularly put to use.
Sheryl Goldstein, director of the Mayor's Office on Criminal Justice, confirmed that police have recently begun testing a single gunshot sensor in East Baltimore. Dispatchers have been overheard on a city police scanner recently alerting officers to possible gunshot detections along the high-crime Monument Street corridor, though the precise location of the sensor is unclear.
The sensors, marketed by several companies, can track gunfire to within 10 feet of the discharge and are supposed to distinguish gunshots from other city sounds, such as engine backfires and fireworks. Linked with surveillance cameras, the alerts help officials quickly zero in on the area of a suspected shooting, potentially aiding in the pursuit of suspects or speeding up medical care to victims.
"We told all these companies that if they put them up, we'd love live demos to work out kinks and figure out what its capacity is," Goldstein said. "We're really in the beginning phase."
More than 30 cities across the country use some form of the gunshot-sensing technology. In East Orange, N.J., police officials have lauded its gunshot detection system as the city has seen a 63 percent drop in shootings from 2003 to 2008.
It's not without flaws, however. The Boston Globe reported last year that of the more than 30,000 events recorded by the sensors, 98 percent were firecrackers or other loud noises. After spending the first few months dispatching officers to locations where firecrackers were reported, the department learned how to identify most of those incidents and ignore them. Police there credited only 10 arrests to the technology.
Baltimore officials said previous demonstrations had shown "uneven" results, and so far the test sensor in East Baltimore has helped direct camera operators to a shooting, but also has led to several false alarms.
"Up until recently, we hadn't seen any product that demonstrated a likelihood of being able to deliver the type of results worth making the investment," Goldstein said. "The technology has come along, and we're going to keep looking at it and see if it's at the right time."
