Aurora police and officials from ShotSpotter, Inc. will soon sit down and figure out which two square miles in the city will be covered by the gunfire-spotting software the City Council agreed to purchase this week.
That’s the next step after the council approved a three-year, $400,000 contract with Washington, D.C.-based ShotSpotter, a system officials said would increase enforcement against shots fired in the city, decrease the number of shots fired incidents and possibly save lives.
The item was approved without comment at the regular City Council meeting Tuesday evening, after two meetings of detailed descriptions and discussions about the software.
Trish Lane, of ShotSpotter, has said that across the country, some 80% of shots fired go unreported. The reasons why vary, but it creates “a normalization of gun violence” in a community, she has said.
She has said with ShotSpotter, police can respond faster and more accurately, collecting better evidence and getting victims of gunshot wounds help faster than with standard 911 calls.
Lane said ShotSpotter installs acoustic sensors in a given area. The sensors filter out things like fireworks, and focus on actual gunfire. It then triangulates where the gunfire came from and reports it to listeners in California or Washington, D.C., who dispatch the information to the local police agency.
Aurora’s contract will buy two square miles of coverage from ShotSpotter, and officials will be developing where those should be in Aurora. They can be two square miles together, or two different, one-square-mile areas.
In Illinois, the system is used in Rockford, Springfield, Peoria, North Chicago and Chicago.