By Tony Hicks –
The Antioch City Council on Tuesday will decide whether to enter into a five-year agreement with a gunshot detection system company to monitor the city’s gunfire activity and find locations of shootings.
At its Oct. 11 meeting, the council directed staff to identify the most critical areas for coverage by the company ShotSpotter Respond based on an analysis of gunfire-related crimes, as well as price proposals and the fiscal impact to the city.
ShotSpotter says its technology directs police to precise locations of gunfire in more than 90 percent of gunfire cases where its technology is used.
Antioch police identified three critical coverage areas from five years of gun-related crime data (from January 2017 through May 2022) to ShotSpotter, which then produced maps depicting the most critical areas in the city (two in the west and one in the southeast side of the city).
Shotspotter presented two proposals to the city: The first would cost $1.06 million over five years and cover 3 square miles in the two most critical areas on the west side of the city.
The second proposal would cost $1.41 million and cover 4 square miles and include a section of the southeast side of Antioch. ShotSpotter offers discounts and guaranteed pricing for contracts longer than three years.
The technology uses acoustic sensors “to identify, discriminate, record, and locate gunshots, then send an alert to law enforcement within seconds of the shots being fired,” according to a staff report for Tuesday’s meeting.
The Antioch Police Department is recommending a five-year subscription “to further increase the effectiveness and efficiency of department staff, enabling the department to direct resources into the community where they are needed most. ShotSpotter Technologies will give the Antioch Police Department an effective tool and resource to aid in solving and reducing violent crime in the city.”
ShotSpotter Respond says on its website that in the city of Oakland, which uses the service, 101 victims were found and aided by police when no one called in the shooting in 2020. ShotSpotter’s tech, which was developed in Silicon Valley, is used in a number of Bay Area municipalities and major cities around the country like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
The Antioch City Council meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the council chambers at 200 H St. The meeting can be seen online at www.antiochca.gov.
Considering number of times antioch has equaled or exceeded number of murders in Richmond, system will get a work out.
Super glad to see this, it’s gunfire every night on the Ring app, with people trying to figure out how close to their home it is. Wish we had the Flock safety cameras too, along with a numerically adequate police force.