Police Departments Reported ShotSpotter as Unreliable and Wasteful

October 9, 2012

Recent reports indicate that police departments have raised concerns about ShotSpotter's algorithmic systems for locating gunshots, citing high false positive rates and unnecessary waste of resources. Consequently, some departments have decided to discontinue the use of these systems.

For those interested in shaping safe and secure AI practices and contributing to harm prevention efforts, consider joining HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern) to map and manage such incidents, ensuring trustworthy AI governance.

Alleged deployer

troy-police-department, syracuse-police-department, san-francisco-police-department, san-antonio-police-department, new-york-city-police-department, fall-river-police-department, chicago-police-department

Alleged developer

shotspotter

Alleged harmed parties

troy-residents, troy-police-department, syracuse-residents, syracuse-police-department, san-francisco-residents, san-francisco-police-department, san-antonio-residents, san-antonio-police-department, new-york-city-residents, new-york-city-police-department, fall-river-residents, fall-river-police-department, chicago-residents, chicago-police-department

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.

Police Departments Reported ShotSpotter as Unreliable and Wasteful

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