I will not be using the R word. I'm not that type of fellow. I deeply respect our mayor even if he's intellectually challenged.
Mayor Johnson spends $8.6 million on nine-month ShotSpotter deal — more than entire past year’s cost
Johnson announced last week that the city planned to shut down the gunshot detection system after the historically violent summer months and the Democratic National Convention, making good on a key campaign promise.
By Tom Schuba and Fran Spielman, Suntimes
Feb 22, 2024
Mayor Brandon Johnson is spending $8.6 million to extend the city’s controversial deal with ShotSpotter for nine final months — shelling out significantly more than the city paid for the entire past year of service.
Johnson announced last week the city planned to shut down the gunshot detection system after the historically violent summer months and the Democratic National Convention, making good on a key campaign promise.
But the announcement caught ShotSpotter’s parent company, SoundThinking, off guard, sparking frantic negotiations resulting in a last-minute deal announced Feb. 16 — just hours before the contract was set to expire and the system could have gone offline.
In separate statements, SoundThinking and the mayor’s office ultimately said the technology would remain in place through Sept. 22, the date Johnson initially put forward to “decommission” ShotSpotter. That will be followed by a two-month “transition period.”
In the end, city officials rebuffed the company’s push for a one-year extension but effectively agreed to pay the full amount covering that period.
The new agreement is valued at over $8.6 million, 5% higher than for the entire year before.
Awarded in August 2018, the ShotSpotter deal is now valued at roughly $57.5 million. The city has so far paid out more than $36 million, with the latest payment of over $1 million coming Tuesday.
But with apparently no options left to renew the initial contract, it’s unclear if the new agreement will require City Council approval. The mayor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, Police Supt. Larry Snelling — a noted ShotSpotter proponent — signed an agreement in October giving the department six months of free access to another SoundThinking product that helps investigators sift through data from other jurisdictions.
The following month, SoundThinking CEO Ralph Clark told investors he hoped that trial could lead to “a mid- or high- six figure transaction in the latter half of 2024,” according to South Side Weekly.
’This whole process has been challenging’
During a news conference after Wednesday’s City Council meeting, Johnson pegged the extension's cost at roughly $8 million without saying what he would have paid had he not announced his decision to terminate the contract before nailing down the terms.
Pressed to say what tipped the scales in favor of getting rid of the technology, Johnson cited a “series of investigations and reports” indicating ShotSpotter simply “hasn’t yielded the results that were promised.”
“It really came down to is it providing a real, true benefit which it promised to do? And unfortunately, report after report here in the city of Chicago has indicated otherwise,” Johnson said.
“We have to look very carefully at how the city of Chicago is appropriating dollars and whether or not there’s a benefit there,” he added. “And I just didn’t see enough evidence that there was a benefit.”
Gary Bunyard, SoundThinking’s vice senior president of sales, said “this whole process has been challenging in that the objectives of the city seem to be changing during this negotiation process.”
Bunyard said the company was “quite surprised” by Johnson’s announcement, which followed a Chicago Sun-Times report detailing his intention to cut off ShotSpotter after seven months. The company’s stock value tumbled afterwards, just as it had when Johnson was elected.
SoundThinking previously had said it spent much of last year trying to engage the city about a new deal and even sent a 12-month proposal last December.
That proposed memorandum of understanding ultimately led to “preliminary discussions” for an 8-to-9-month deal that would’ve allowed the city to initiate a formal bidding process for a new gunshot detection contract.
Company looks to prove its worth
SoundThinking holds that ShotSpotter saves lives and helps the police department quickly respond to shooting incidents.
Bunyard said the company hopes to work with the department to produce monthly statistics “showing the accuracy and the efficacy” of the technology, currently used in 12 of the department’s 22 police districts.
“We believe the data will show the value, the role we play in shoring up the gap in 911 [calls], in rendering aid to gunshot victims and helping the police department collect evidence,” he said. “But in order to do that, we need more data. We need a process in place that pulls this information from every district, every week and rolls it up on a monthly basis and makes it available to everybody who has an interest in this program.”
“That’s why we were requesting 12 months,” he added. “It’s going to take a while to get that all in place.”
Top prosecutor says ShotSpotter has little impact on gun violence cases
A report issued by the city’s top watchdog in August 2021 acknowledged the “limitations in data quality and reporting” but also found that ShotSpotter has rarely led to investigatory stops or evidence of gun crimes.
It’s among the research that has raised serious alarms about the technology, which critics frame as a costly surveillance tool that has led to overpricing in minority communities.
SoundThinking is counting on the improved data collection to convince a majority of City Council members to overrule Johnson. That would seem to be a realistic goal if the police union’s staunchest supporters join forces with colleagues representing Black and Hispanic wards where violent crime is highest.
On Wednesday, Johnson was asked whether his mind was made up or whether he is open to changing his mind during the extension.
“This is a done deal. I’ve canceled ShotSpotter,” he said. “The point of this data collection … is more about how we build tools and systems to create safer communities.”
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