Minneapolis: the new Compton?
Dave Schaffer over at Buzz.mn posted this (pdf) map showing a week’s worth of shots-fired reports in the Minneapolis city limits.
The map, which I’ve condensed here at the right, includes ShotSpotter detections, other reports of shots fired and actual shootings. Note, the only actual shootings registered area single star downtown and one north of the river.
According to police, ShotSpotter helped them capture a shooting suspect in March.
The $325,000 ShotSpotter program came online in January. Here’s more info on ShotSpotter from a company-created video.
According to Kare11: “The ShotSpotter is already used in cities like Chicago and Phoenix. The company that makes the system claims gunfire has gone down 60 to 90 percent in areas that have the ShotSpotter. It’s the result Minneapolis police and city officials are hoping for here, with 5 to 6 thousand reports of shots fired in the city each year.”
Here’s some early Minneapolis SS data thanks to Minneapolis St. Paul Crime Watch:
Jordan neighborhood has seen the highest number of ShotSpotter calls for service at 42% of the total ShotSpotter events. As in the Southside neighborhoods, ShotSpotter shows promising initial success. One of these early successes occurred on March 18 in the Jordan neighborhood. Police were dispatched to a ShotSpotter activation in the 2700 block of Knox Avenue North. There they located 19-year-old Jay Kong carrying a handgun. Kong was arrested and has been charged with reckless discharge of a firearm, a felony. The officers recovered the .22 caliber revolver used to fire the shots, permanently removing that gun from the City streets.
All those red dots on the north and south side of downtown making you nervous to venture around town? I saw something a few weeks ago about just how many car backfires, slamming garbage cans, etc. can cause SpotShot false alarms.
But knowing the reputation of some of those areas, I’m sure a lot of those red dots are actual gunshots. I know in many communities using SpotShot, police typically need to wait for backup before going to the location where shots were fired — thus allowing the shooter to escape.
Anyone know MPD policy on backup? Do you agree with spending budget on catching criminals rather than preventing the crime? Would love to hear your thoughts.
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Thank god there were only 6 shots fired in my neighborhood… sigh…
Ugh… this seems like a bad idea for a couple of reasons.
First, no matter what the circumstances (which are not determined), there is total criminal liability for those who happen to be at the scene. Without these ShotSpotters, the police would have discretion as to arrest based on their knowledge of what’s going on, who the person is, etc. Here, police can’t and don’t know what was going on, but they arrest anyway.
If you’re a fan of the prison system, then that’s great. If prisons were great rehabilitation centers, turning out civic-minded, upright citizens, then I’d be all for these things. However, making “19-year-old Jay Kong” into a felon puts him in prison (where he’ll learn how to be a real criminal, and then handicaps him when he’s released (probably relatively soon) because he’ll be branded a dreaded felon — and have a near-impossible time finding a job, place to live, etc.
Annnnnd…. this lazy solution gets rid of the trust and connection a police force needs with its community. It’s bad news.
Hey, Greg. Cool article. Not to be picky, but the map has *two* stars on it. One south of the river and one north.
Chris, I’m not following you. I’m a little confused, because your second paragraph is attacking methodology (relying on technology rather than community relationship), your third paragraph seems to be suggesting that it’s bad to catch people who are illegally carrying and using guns, and then the fourth paragraph is critiquing methodology again.
Assuming I’ve followed you correctly, I have to first state that I am hardly impressed with our justice and corrections system, but I would rather not see gun-toting-and-firing people on the streets, even if it means that they will be exposed to imperfections in the system.
Also, I would agree that police should not use any technological solution as a crutch and that they need to build solid, effective relationships with the community. That stated, it seems that ShotSpotter might be a promising tool to assist in detecting and responding to gunshots. It’s still too early to tell, of course, how that works here in Minneapolis.
Are the police going to be swamped with false positives due to garbage can lids, car backfires, firecrackers, and the like? Hard to tell, but if the trend of shots spotted goes down, it suggests that some kind of illicit behavior is being curbed.
I love how people complain about the correctional system based on stereotyped generalizations. I work in a correctional facility and we have well over 200 community volunteers who come in a try to help inmates change their lives. The truth is most of them go back to the same enviroment when they get out and have no desire to really change themselves for the better. They play the game while the are in the system to try and make themselve look better to their judge so they can get their probation time reduced. Most criminals don’t think like the average citizen and have no desire to be good citizens.
Poor parenting is the true culprit here. You don’t have to be rich or a certain color to be a good parent. But ignorant people tend to breed more so guess what we are going to get. More people raised by idiots. If people knew how little time crimminals really do for crimes they would be sickened. But the truth is tax payers want criminals off the streets and rehabilitated but don’t want to pay the high price to do that. That is why we have to rely on volunteers to help try and plant the seeds of change in these inmates heads. So Chris if you really want to blame corrections for the problems please feel free to volunteer to be a part of the solution. Then you can have the “19 yo Jay Kongs” of the world blow smoke up you ass and minimalize their self responsibility in their crimes.
Paul- I’m in no way blaming corrections for the problems. I was saying that a technology that can seek out tons of people just to dump in the prison system is a bad solution. Also, I was saying that getting more police is infinitely better than these things.
It just creates a bad environment: will people avoid neighborhoods with these things — discouraging economic development? Will people be fearful of renting here? Will bad residents see these things and think “wow, I live in a real bad part of town, I guess it’s expected and normal to be a criminal here.”
I volunteered and helped create an alternative sentencing agency in Wisconsin for a while back in college — that stuff works wonders. It develops skills, sets goals and consequences, and fosters responsibility. The prison system should be for when people really screw up, since like you said they usually “have no desire to really change themselves for the better.”
Jim- I wasn’t too clear. Rounding up everyone with unregistered guns is definitely a good thing. This is just doing it in a bad way, both because of the community trust thing, and because of the context thing: I’m thinking of the hopefully rare case where some kid screws around, shoots a gun and the police swoop in. The penalty for such a situation, without knowing any context (because w/ these things you can’t really know the context), just seems Big Brotherish.
But, hopefully it turns out to do more good than bad. Thanks for the thoughtful comments though–