Listening to ShotSpotter: Acoustics and Predictive Policing in Chicago

Abstract

This project hopes to highlight a moving, multidirectional story about acoustic surveillance tools and how they are used to predict and conduct the future. I focus on ShotSpotter Inc’s occupation in Chicago, which has grown omnipresent following the signature of the city’s current contract with ShotSpotter for $33 million in the summer of 2021, lasting through August 2023 (Del Vecchio and Chapman 2022).2 Chicago is now blanketed with microphones and Strategic Decision Support Centers (“SDSC’s”) installed to 21 of the city’s 22 police districts. (Ibid and CBS 2020)3. Chicago accounted for 14% of ShotSpotter’s total revenue in 2021, as the company’s second largest customer (MarketScreener 2022)4. Activists in the city have protested this relationship, especially after ShotSpotter acquired predictive policing company HunchLab in 2018.5 Legislation in Illinois has yet to adequately grapple with advanced acoustic surveillance and predictive policing techniques, further ripening this moment for this dialogue.6 This project is not a study of the borne and exacerbated ills of ShotSpotter’s collaborations with Chicago Police and their rise of their technocratic methodologies, nor is the project much concerned with ShotSpotter’s credence as a technology that is successful even by its own objectives.7 Rather, this project is an experimental inquiry into how our futures may be patrolled by means of acoustic capture and prediction. I explored this by placing ShotSpotter’s approach in contrast with other shapes and styles of listening that nurture the past, present, and future.