Friend –

Milwaukee has used a suspect gunshot detection technology called ShotSpotter for more than a decade, spending millions of taxpayer dollars despite its troubling history of failure and unreliability.

Much is still unknown about ShotSpotter. It purports to reduce gun violence by automatically detecting and alerting police to sounds of gunfire, but we still don't know if it actually works in Milwaukee – and there's a lot of evidence that it doesn't in other cities. And, until very recently, we didn't know where the ShotSpotter microphones that are supposed to sense gunshot sounds were located.

But now we have a better idea. A new WIRED report uncovered leaked internal documents showing that the sensors are overwhelmingly placed in predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhoods nationwide. In Milwaukee, microphones are exclusively present in Black and Latinx communities and nowhere else in Wisconsin.

These placements continue the long legacy of overpolicing and surveilling Black and Brown Americans. And it's all the more troubling that Milwaukee is doing this by using a technology that is notorious for leading to false arrests, wrongful incarceration, unconstitutional policing, and hostile, sometimes violent police encounters.

Right now, communities have virtually no control over the technology law enforcement uses to police citizens. At a minimum, these tools need to be transparent and accountable to the people who are subject to them. Passing a Community Control over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) ordinance at the local level would bring these arcane tools into the light of day, creating space for public input and oversight.

Watch ACLU of Wisconsin Policy Analyst Jon McCray Jones discuss ShotSpotter in an episode of Here & Now on PBS's website, and read our blog for further analysis.

Thanks for sticking with us,

ACLU of Wisconsin