Chicago Terminates ShotSpotter Contract After Years of Criticism

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announces the city is terminating its contract with ShotSpotter, the controversial gunshot detection technology company, bringing to an end one of the largest and longest-running deployments of acoustic surveillance in American policing. The contract will expire on September 22, 2024, fulfilling Johnson’s campaign promise to end the city’s relationship with the company.

Chicago’s decision to abandon ShotSpotter represents a significant victory for civil rights advocates, community organizers, and technology critics who have spent years documenting the system’s failures and discriminatory impacts. The city’s experience with ShotSpotter serves as a cautionary tale about the limitations and dangers of deploying AI-powered surveillance technology in law enforcement.

The termination follows years of mounting evidence that ShotSpotter failed to deliver on its core promises. The Chicago Office of Inspector General’s 2021 audit found that only 9% of ShotSpotter alerts led to evidence of gun-related criminal offenses. Subsequent analyses revealed even worse performance, with more than 90% of alerts producing no evidence of gunfire when police arrived on scene. This meant Chicago police were conducting an average of 87 unfounded deployments every day based on ShotSpotter alerts—a massive waste of police resources and a significant source of unnecessary law enforcement contact with residents.

The technology’s deployment disproportionately impacted Black and Latino communities on Chicago’s South and West sides, where the sensors were concentrated. This created a pattern of over-policing in communities of color, with police repeatedly dispatched to neighborhoods based on false alerts. The Michael Williams case, in which a 63-year-old man spent nearly a year in jail based on unreliable and allegedly manipulated ShotSpotter evidence before prosecutors dropped charges, exemplified the technology’s potential for serious harm to individuals.

Questions about ShotSpotter’s accuracy and the company’s practice of allowing analysts to modify alerts at police request further eroded confidence in the technology. The revelation that the company’s widely marketed “97% accuracy” claim was based on voluntary customer complaints rather than independent verification demonstrated the gap between marketing promises and operational reality.

Beyond accuracy concerns, the contract represented a significant financial burden. Chicago spent millions of dollars annually on ShotSpotter technology that demonstrably failed to prevent gun violence or improve public safety outcomes. Civil rights organizations and community groups argued these resources would be better invested in proven violence prevention strategies like mental health services, youth programs, and economic development in underserved neighborhoods.

Chicago’s abandonment of ShotSpotter follows similar decisions by other cities including Dayton, Ohio; Portland, Oregon; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Trenton, New Jersey. Atlanta also declined to move forward after pilot programs produced poor results. This trend reflects growing recognition among city leaders that algorithmic policing tools often fail to deliver promised benefits while imposing real costs on communities in terms of privacy, civil liberties, and trust in law enforcement.

The Chicago decision delivers a major blow to ShotSpotter (which rebranded as SoundThinking), potentially triggering a cascade of other jurisdictions reconsidering their contracts. It also signals a broader shift in thinking about the role of surveillance technology in policing, with increasing emphasis on community-based solutions and skepticism about techno-solutionism in addressing complex social problems like gun violence.