Durham County sheriff, former mayor criticize city’s dropping ShotSpotter for now
Durham County’s sheriff and one of the city’s longest-serving mayors are criticizing the City Council’s decision to put a gunshot-detection program on hold while it is evaluated.
The City Council voted 4-2 Monday night to end the ShotSpotter program, at least for now, while the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke University reviews the one-year pilot program that ended Dec. 14.
The council’s leaders — new Mayor Leo Williams and Mayor Pro Tem Mark-Anthony Middleton — were the only members to support continuing the program while it is evaluated.
“The vote to not extend the ShotSpotter contract delivers a setback to law enforcement’s ability to effectively address gun violence in Durham,” Sheriff Clarence Birkhead said in a statement Friday morning.
WHY IT MATTERS: Durham struggles with gun violence and had the audio sensors installed in a 3-square mile area of East and Southeast Durham, including near the N.C. Central University and Durham Technical Community College campuses, where 1 in 3 gunshot wounds occur.
HOW IT HELPS: Shotspotter gets police to shooting scenes more quickly in situations where every minute counts. In a report to the City Council, Police Chief Patrice Andrews said the short-staffed department regularly misses its response-time goals, averaging 6 minutes and 38 seconds from January to March of this year. ShotSpotter helped improve that to 4 minutes 58 seconds in the target area. “That’s a very good thing,” Andrews said in a May report on WRAL.
WHY IT’S CONTROVERSIAL: More police does not mean more safety, opponents say. Officers arriving in an area where residents have not called, and may not want them, can have unintended consequences. Groups like Durham Beyond Policing want to see ShotSpotter money redirected to policing alternatives like the city’s new HEART program that sends unarmed responders on certain crisis calls, sometimes with police and sometimes without.
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: Birkhead, whose deputies also respond to calls in the city, said Durham was one of seven communities across North Carolina using ShotSpotter, joining Winston-Salem, Fayetteville, Wilmington, Goldsboro, Rocky Mount and Greenville.
“I have heard stories this year when shots have been fired and no one contacted 911 – leaving ShotSpotter to fill the gap to inform law enforcement to respond,” he said. “In those same conversations, residents have expressed overwhelming support for having this technology, along with the increased presence of law enforcement in the community. You cannot put a price tag on that level of peace of mind – that level of public safety.”
Durham posts ShotSpotter data on a public dashboard. In the pilot year just completed, only 27% of ShotSpotter alerts were accompanied by a call to 911. Nearly 3 in 4 gunshots, many happening in the early morning hours, were never reported to police by residents.
Former Mayor Bill Bell wrote an op ed criticizing the council’s decision, suggesting those who most strongly oppose the program may not reflect what residents in the affected neighborhoods want.
The company Bell works for, UDI/Community Development Corp., allowed ShotSpotter to install sensors on a building in Old North Five Points where shots had been fired from across the street.
“Fortunately, no one was present in the building; otherwise there could have been serious injuries,” Bell wrote. “I am sure that had ShotSpotter been installed at the time of that shooting, police would have been notified immediately.”
“I wonder,” the eight-term mayor continued, “how many of the people who complain of ShotSpotter being a tool that constitutes over policing of Black and brown communities actually live and work in those communities and are exposed to needless and senseless gunfire?”
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT: The city is expected to get the review and may reconsider ShotSpotter in March 2024.
The numbers
$52,356: The cost of extending the ShotSpotter contract another three months.
$249,856: The total 15-month cost if the city had approved a 3-month extension
204: The number of people shot in Durham as of Dec. 16 (42 fatally, 162 nonfatally)
1,416: ShotSpotter alerts during the pilot year just completed
43: False positive alerts
5,259: The number of rounds fired in the 1,416 incidents
48: Gunshot wounds associated with those incidents
24: Arrests made
21: Guns recovered
0: Resident complaints about the responding officers’ conduct
