Some local governments say gunshot detection systems allow police to respond quickly to shootings. But after backlash, some cities stopped using the technology.
Why privacy advocates are sounding the alarm over doorbell cameras
Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance and Ring’s Super Bowl ad have brought new attention to doorbell cameras and privacy concerns.
When gunshots ring out on an American street, bystanders are instantly faced with a high-stakes dilemma.
Should I call the police? Was that a gunshot too? (Maybe it was just fireworks.)
A moment’s hesitation risks delaying treatment or giving the suspect time to flee. But a high-tech solution to the problem has sparked new controversy in cities across the country.
Law enforcement officials in states including New York, Georgia, California, Michigan and Virginia have credited some systems with helping make arrests and alerting them to shootings that would otherwise go unreported.
The system is part of an arsenal that police surveillance technology advocates warn is similar to license plate readers, a network of audio sensors designed to record gunshots and tell authorities where they were fired.
That’s where the problems begin.
This technology faces many controversies, including concerns about privacy and eavesdropping. Complaints about accuracy. There are even reports of many devices being installed in the wrong locations.
Officials in San Jose, California, and Champaign, Illinois, stopped using the system after the company found it was far worse at detecting gunshots than it had claimed. In Jackson, Mississippi, some devices were installed on private property without the owner’s consent and left despite the city’s request to remove them. In Roanoke, Virginia, the city removed detectors after a failed deployment worried residents.
One of these devices was accidentally placed in Caitlin Bourne’s yard where her children were playing.
“I think everyone should have the right to privacy in their own home, and it makes you feel really vulnerable when you don’t know if someone is listening all the time,” Vaughan said. “You don’t have to be doing something wrong to want to have a private space.”
Do gunshot detectors detect more than just gunshots?
Companies that develop gunfire detection technology, such as Flock Safety, said their systems are designed to listen for gunshots, not private conversations. A 2019 privacy assessment of Flock competitor ShotSpotter (now known as SoundThinking) by the New York University School of Law’s Police Project found that “the risks of audio surveillance are actually very low.”
Flock spokeswoman Paris Rubel told USA TODAY that the device “is not a continuous recording device, does not monitor conversations, and cannot be used to intercept private communications.” Rubel said these devices work like Amazon Alexa and only start recording when they hear a “public safety event.”
Ethan Ambabbo, Flock’s former principal product manager, gave a slightly different explanation of the technology in a 2023 webinar for prospective customers posted on the company’s website. The devices record five-second snippets of audio, use machine learning models to analyze the clips and send them to the cloud, Ambabbo said, and alert law enforcement if they contain gunshots.
Mr. Ambabbo acknowledged that the device had captured what sounded like gunshots and parts of conversations, but that it was “very rare.”
“This device does not stream audio,” he said. “The other thing is, this device can’t even be turned on remotely and stream audio, so if someone just goes and sits and listens, they can’t hear the conversation there in any meaningful way.”
Flock’s announcement that it was eliminating the ability to detect sounds of “human suffering” in addition to gunshots raised further concerns among advocates, including Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“It’s unclear how this technology would be legal, given that many states have laws against wiretapping and recording people’s conversations without their knowledge,” Guariglia said.
As the mother of two preschoolers who she said were likely neurodivergent, Vaughn was concerned that the distress feature could cause unnecessary intrusion by law enforcement.
“They’re both screaming all the time, when they’re happy, when they’re sad, when they’re angry…Will my children just playing outside be recorded and stored somewhere in the police station?” she said.
Rubel said distress detection is no longer a feature of Flock’s system, but declined to answer questions about how that decision was reached or whether it had ever been used by law enforcement.
Does gunshot detection technology work?
Gunshot detection technology and the controversy surrounding it are not new.
SoundThinking claims to have established gunshot detection technology over 25 years ago. Police in several states, including Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina and Texas, have recently refrained from using the technology, the Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA TODAY Network, previously reported.
Flock’s gunshot detection system debuted in 2022, and several law enforcement officials have credited the technology with helping track suspects and uncovering a higher rate of shootings than previously known. Flock said its device can pinpoint the location of gunshots within 90 feet and has 90% accuracy.
But nine months after starting a pilot program, police in Champaign, Illinois, found that only 8 percent of the alerts generated by Raven resulted in officers finding the scene of an apparent shooting. Police said most of the unfounded warnings were fireworks. Police spokesman Joe Lamberson said the system was decommissioned after a year-long trial.
According to a May 2024 report from the city’s Office of Digital Privacy, the San Jose Police Department found that the accuracy of its Flock devices rose from about 50% during the first few months of the pilot program to 80% after recalibration. Although the device was able to detect gunshots that were not reported through other channels, it also recorded dozens of false positives (sounds classified as non-gunshots by human judges) and failed to detect gunshots directly below where the sensor was located, the report found.
In a statement to USA TODAY, the department said, “Raven did not meet the agency’s accuracy expectations and was removed from the City of San Jose following a report.”
Privacy concerns weigh on local governments
The technology can be very divisive, with one survey in Portland, Oregon, finding that about 48% of residents supported the city’s use of the device in their neighborhoods, while 51% opposed it. The results led city leaders to abandon plans to implement the technology, said Chris Henning, a professor at Portland State University who conducted the study.
Almost 80% of Portland respondents expressed some level of concern about privacy. Henning said concerns surrounding this and other surveillance technologies appear to stem from a deepening mistrust of law enforcement, which, if addressed, could help solve the problem of gunshot underreporting.
“The more important question is: Can we trust this company? Can we trust the government with this data?” he said. “In a broader sense, this doesn’t really mean me and them spying on me, it’s just a general sense of government infiltration.”
Similar concerns have arisen in other cities where Flock’s gunshot detection technology has been installed. Residents of Pontiac, Michigan, voiced these concerns at a June 17 City Council meeting, the Detroit News reported.
“Personally, I don’t think we can trust what they’re doing with our data and information,” Destiny Ingram said, according to the report.
The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office used the Raven in the city for six months as part of a free trial program, the Detroit News reported. As of May 8, shooting data had been used in nine cases, including murder, attempted murder, and felon in possession of a firearm, the outlet reported, citing law enforcement officials.
Despite residents’ concerns, the City Council voted to renew the contract for two years and $72,000, the Detroit News reported.
“When a tragedy occurs, it’s our responsibility to solve the problem, not just answer philosophical questions,” Mayor Mike McGuinness said, referring to the balance between public safety and the right to privacy, according to the newspaper.
Deployment is stopped due to rollout failure
In at least two cities, problems with Flock’s gunshot detection technology began before the system was in use. Tommy Brown, a spokesman for the Jackson, Mississippi, Police Department, told USA TODAY that Flock placed some of Raven’s devices on private property without the knowledge or permission of police or the property owner.
“Additionally, despite the city’s request to remove the equipment in 2025, Flock has yet to retrieve the equipment,” Brown said. “In late June 2026, Flock Safety notified the City that analysis related to the acoustic sensors was operating within an approximately 0.5 square mile area where the equipment was located, even though JPD had never activated or used the system.”
Roanoke City Manager Valmarie Turner said the Raven device was being removed and the deployment halted following a “preventable failure of the city’s process.”
Turner said the list of sensor locations approved by the City Council in April included misspelled and inaccurate addresses due to “data entry errors.” The ordinance allowing the installation was repealed on July 6th.
Cardinal News reported that at least 30 devices were installed in the wrong locations. City officials did not respond to requests from USA TODAY for more information about the multiple failed deployments.
“We know that flocking is a big issue, but we don’t necessarily want to give the impression that we’re participating in this national flocking discussion when that’s not really the issue,” city spokeswoman Jenelle Few said in a brief phone interview. “This is about a clerical input error on the city’s part.”
Vaughn said she’s glad the device near her home was removed quickly, but after learning more about the flock, she doesn’t want to install it anywhere else in Roanoke.
“The more I looked at it, the more chill I got,” Vaughn said. “Especially the lack of transparency.”
contribution: Shahid Meighan, Columbus Detachment
