Construction costs, land use regulation and zoning among the reasons why housing development lags growth in jobs, number of households
BOSTON – A new Pioneer Institute study recommends that municipal leaders employ strategies like density bonuses and expedited permitting to prioritize the construction of family-oriented housing in urban areas to combat high prices and supply shortages resulting from decades of insufficient housing development.
“Across the country, housing production has been low since the 2008 financial crisis,” said Andrew Mikula, author of “Supply Stagnation: The Root Cause of Greater Boston’s Housing Crisis and How to Fix It.” “The housing crisis is especially acute in Boston because supply in the region never bounced back from the 1991 recession.”
As of last November, the median down payment on a house in Greater Boston was $105,300 – more than the region’s annual median income. The cost of building a typical “starter home” in Massachusetts is 22 percent above the national average – the second highest in the nation.
As of June 2023, the average monthly rent in the City of Boston topped $3,000.
High housing costs are one of the primary reasons that residents are leaving in droves, fleeing to more affordable locations. Those between 26 and 35 years old, who are just forming families, are the most likely to leave.
From 2010 to 2020, the number of households in Greater Boston increased by 10.7 percent while the number of housing units only rose 7.9 percent. Not surprisingly, the region’s vacancy rate is consistently well below the national average.
Among the reasons why this trend is likely to continue is Baby Boomers’ desire to “age in place” rather than move in with family members or move to group settings.
From 2002 to 2022, Greater Boston added 3.3 jobs for every housing permit that was granted. The recommended range is from 0.75 to 1.5 jobs for every permit. Nationally, the number of homes that were permitted but haven’t begun construction has reached a 39-year high.
There are a number of reasons why housing production is down across the U.S. and in the Boston area. Nationally, the cost of construction materials was 43 percent higher at the start of this year than in January 2020. A construction labor shortage also places upward pressure on costs. At $333,200 in 2023, the cost of an acre of land in Massachusetts is second only to Rhode Island.
Land use regulations and zoning also contribute to low production and high costs. Despite high population density in Massachusetts, lot sizes are larger than average. Some Boston suburbs require owners to have an acre or more of contiguous land to build a house.
Rules like parking requirements for new developments can be out of step with residents’ needs. Most Brookline zoning districts require two off-street parking spaces for each residential unit, even though only 24 percent of town residents have access to two or more vehicles.
Politically, housing development is difficult because the loudest voices in the debate tend to be existing homeowners who want to protect their property values and officials concerned with rising school budgets. Despite popular belief, numerous studies demonstrate that new construction doesn’t measurably impact surrounding property values and that multi-family homes in particular tend to be fiscally positive. In addition, declining enrollments in many Boston suburbs should reduce concerns about school overcrowding.
Proposed solutions that don’t address the underlying supply issue are unlikely to help advance housing availability and affordability. The best known such policy is rent control. One study found that San Francisco landlords subject to rent control reduced their rental housing stock by 15 percent.
In addition to advocating for density bonuses and expedited permitting, Mikula’s recommendations include diversifying suburban housing by rezoning to accommodate more townhouses, multi-family housing and rentals for young families.
Mikula also cites Federal Housing Choice Vouchers (formerly known as “Section 8 vouchers”) as an effective tool.
Andrew Mikula is a Housing Fellow at Pioneer Institute. Beyond housing, Andrew’s research areas of interest include urban planning, economic development, and regulatory reform. He holds a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
This week on The Learning Curve co-hosts U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng and Steven Wilson interview Kimberly Steadman, co-director of Edward Brooke Charter Schools. Steadman reflects on her educational background and leadership in urban charter public schools. She discusses the importance of rigorous academic expectations for K-12 students, and how this outlook influences her educational philosophy co-directing the Brooke charter school network. Ms. Steadman shares the challenges faced by Massachusetts charters due to the post-2016 ballot loss, and how she and other charter public school leaders advance supportive policy reforms.
Stories of the Week: Albert shared an article from The New York Times sharing the impact of Socrates, Plato, and liberal arts in higher education; Steven discussed a news story in The Hill on ‘national tutoring corps’ to fix education gaps.
Guest:
Kimberly Steadman joined Brooke Charter Schools in 2004 as a math teacher and professional development coordinator. Since then, she founded Brooke’s first elementary school and co-led the expansion of Brooke from one campus to five. Ms. Steadman is currently serving as network co-director and holds responsibility for all academic aspects of Brooke. Before coming to Brooke, she taught 4th grade in the D.C. Public Schools and 5th grade in Chelsea Public Schools. Ms. Steadman earned a B.A. at Harvard College; a J.D. from Harvard Law School; and an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Tweet of the Week:
Click here to read a transcript
[00:00:00] Joe Selvaggi: This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi. Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. Memorial Day marks the start of summer and an attending rise in gun related crime, particularly affecting marginalized communities in cities nationwide, including Boston. One tool that has emerged to help law enforcement address gunfire is ShotSpotter, a network of sensors placed in high crime areas.
[00:00:28] These sensors enable police to triangulate the sounds of gunshots and respond swiftly. Before ShotSpotter’s deployment, about 80 percent of urban gunfire incidents went unreported, hindering criminal investigations and timely aid to victims. However, critics of sound thinking, the company behind ShotSpotter, are concerned that the technology could lead to over policing in vulnerable communities.
[00:00:53] U. S. Senator from Massachusetts Ed Markey has requested the Department of Homeland Security investigate the use of ShotSpotter for potential violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against Sound Thinking, alleging that the technology disproportionately targets communities of color and results in unfair policing.
[00:01:15] How does ShotSpotter work? How is it deployed? And how well can it address public concerns for its accuracy and precision to allay fears that its use unfairly targets vulnerable communities for illegal searches or arrests? My guest today is Tom Chittum, Senior Vice President of Forensics at Sound Thinking and former Associate Deputy Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
[00:01:39] Mr. Chittum, an attorney with over 27 years of law enforcement experience, has conducted and overseen thousands of investigations and frequently testified as an expert witness. He will discuss the capabilities and limitations of ShotSpotter technology, the criteria used to select sensor deployment locations and how ShotSpotter enhances police department’s ability to respond to gun crime. He will also address the concerns for civil rights and liberties of his critics by describing how the tools are a complement and not a substitute for high quality law enforcement practices. When I return, I’ll be joined by Senior Vice President of Sound Thinking, Tom Chittum.
[00:02:17] Okay, we’re back. This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi, and I’m now pleased to be joined by Sound Thinking’s Senior Vice President of Forensics, Tom Chittum. Welcome to Hubwonk, Tom. I appreciate you having me. Great. Well, I’m thrilled to have you on the show. your firm’s technology has been in our news recently when our, our junior senator from Massachusetts, Senator Ed Markey, wrote a letter, recently wrote a letter to Homeland Security, asking for an investigation into grant funding for your Shot Spotter technology.
[00:02:44] Your firm’s name is, Sound Thinking, but the technology’s shot spotter. the concerns, Senator Markey had were that your technology as it’s deployed. May run afoul of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I’ll just state for our listeners who don’t know that, particular Civil Rights Act, it’s, “no person in the United States shall on the ground of race, color, or national origin be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
[00:03:15] So his letter was also signed by another of our senators, Senator Elizabeth Warren and our representative Ayanna Pressley. So, for that reason, I wanted to have you on the show to talk about the technology, how it’s designed, how it’s deployed. And, frankly, with our listeners discuss the promise and pitfalls of the technology so they can form their own decisions.
[00:03:33] So, as our listeners know, I like to start at the beginning in a very basic level, with, a brief description of what ShotSpotter technology is, and what does it do? So, let’s start there.
[00:03:44] Tom Chittum: Sure. Well, if you had asked me before I knew how ShotSpotter worked, I would have had to guess that it was powered by magic, because how could it possibly do what it claims to do?
[00:03:58] But I know now that it is not magic at all. In fact, its basic math, science, and technology that’s been harnessed for public safety good. And the company has an interesting background, and I think we may talk about that, but at a base level, our system uses sensors that are spread out over a large area, they detect loud impulsive sounds like gunfire, and then we go through a process of calculating the time difference of arrival, the time that, that, sound reaches each of our sensors, we calculate the difference, and by doing that, we can determine where the sound came from.
[00:04:35] We also use some processes to sort out things that are not gunfire, so that what’s left behind is gunfire. We publish those to our customers, mostly the police, so they can respond quickly and precisely to where gunfire occurs. It does all of that in less than 60 seconds, and that matters because when you’re talking about gunshots in urban areas, very often time is of the essence.You’re dealing with gunshot wound victims, you’re dealing with ephemeral evidence. And so, police agencies all across the country use Shot Spotter as one tool along with other tools to help address gun violence.
[00:05:13] Joe Selvaggi: So that to me, sure, may sound like magic, but that may align, aligns with my own view of, let’s say, a GPS, how my phone knows where I am based on how my signal might bounce off of towers or satellites.
[00:05:24] So I think it’s, you’re doing very similar technology, with sound. Now I read it in some of the background that there may be as many as 34 individual patents in your technology. How did all of this technology begin? What are the origins of Shot Spotter?
[00:05:38] Tom Chittum: Well, it’s a great story. Dr. Bob Schoen, Dr. Bob, he still works for the company today, and he’s a great gentleman, in the mid-90s, could hear gunfire near his house. In California, it occurred to him that he might be able to use the same processes that earthquake scientists use to locate the epicenter of earthquakes. He might be able to use that to locate where the sound of the gunfire was coming from.
[00:06:04] And so he built a prototype, and he tested it and it worked. And that’s how Shot Spotter was born. Our headquarters is still in California, but as I mentioned, we’ve spread all across the country and now the globe. We’ve got international customers, too. More than 170, customers, rely on Shot Spotter to help them know where shootings occur, but it all started, from the idea that one man had. In his home in California, I had a recent occasion to sit down and talk with him, and he said during, some of the early tests, to see whether or not it could detect sounds, he had set up sensors on his house and some of his neighbors houses, and he would go outside and pop balloons to see if the sound would trigger it.
[00:06:49] The system now, of course, this is an early prototype. So don’t let that mislead you into thinking that the system is set off by balloons. But what he was doing was testing whether or not he could locate precisely where the sound was originating from. and he did. We do have a lot of patents. I said that it’s a simple system and it is, it’s very sophisticated in the way that it works, the data that we use to power it, but at base level it really relies on well-known and fairly simple scientific concepts.
[00:07:22] Joe Selvaggi: So, you mentioned briefly that it’s deployed, I think you said 170 different clients across the country and also internationally. Just briefly, name some of the big cities that are using it. I’m going to include Boston in there, but also maybe if there are other Massachusetts cities that have also used the technology.
[00:07:40] Tom Chittum: So, we’re deployed in major cities across the country. Presently, we’re still deployed in Chicago. We’re deployed in New York City. We’re deployed in Boston, but we’re also deployed in very small cities, too, and medium sized cities. And sometimes people think that ShotSpotter is only a tool for very large metropolitan areas, but the reality is gun violence affects communities in a lot of places in a lot of ways. And so, really in some places, even our smaller customers, end up being some of the best users because they have a manageable problem. They can respond effectively. And so, we’ve really seen it put to good use in a lot of places across the country.
[00:08:23] Joe Selvaggi: So, let’s focus on Boston again. I know you’re in DC now but I’m in Boston and it’s a big city, with lots of different neighborhoods. I want our listeners to understand when a city like Boston, which has a common police department, maybe lots of precincts, ahead of police, when they call you and say, we need your help. How do you decide where to put these sensors, these, this technology that’s listening for shots. You can’t put them everywhere. It’s a big city. Where do you, what happens next when you say, okay, let us help? Where do you decide to put the sensors?
[00:08:51] Tom Chittum: Well, we decide where to put the sensors, but we don’t necessarily decide where to put the coverage areas. So, when a customer approaches us, obviously it’s because they want to address the gun crime issues that they have. Look at objective historical data, things like reports of homicide, prior reports of gunfire, to try and determine those areas where the tool can do the greatest good. I wish ShotSpotter was deployed everywhere. There is a diminishing return on your investment if you’re deploying it in places where there is no gunfire. You pay for a service that doesn’t get used very often. Even still, there are some value in putting it in places like that where it serves as an early warning system for when incidents occur. For instance, we’re deployed on college campuses across the university where these low frequency high consequence events like school shootings may occur and where, timely intelligence is of the essence but, with respect to, police, departments and communities, we look at their, historical crime data. Where is it that they experience the most gunfire? Where have most people been killed by gunfire? And then it’s ultimately up to the customer to decide where the system should be deployed.
[00:10:17] Once that’s determined, the company itself deploys the sensors, and we keep those locations secret for a few reasons. So, we go out, we install them ourselves, we maintain them ourselves. But ultimately, it’s the customer who decides what area gets covered.
[00:10:34] Joe Selvaggi: Now, you already mentioned that it’s a very advanced technology, but it’s using sound. Cities are a noisy place. I know, I live in cities, always have, how precise can the, the sensors triangulate on where a particular gunshot is occurring. There’s echoes and all kinds of confounding noises. How precise? Are we talking about a neighborhood wide, block wide, or can you zero in on a precise location of where a shot was heard?
[00:11:02] Tom Chittum: Yeah, so, well, first, when you talk about the science behind it, you mentioned earlier that we have several patents. We post them on our website. We’ve also written academic papers explaining exactly what it is we’re doing. Some of them are quite dense for a layperson like me. I have to read them slowly to understand them.
[00:11:23] But we explain the science. It’s not secretive what it is that we are doing. And our system, uses several layers of filtering to make sure that the sounds that we are publishing to our customers are, in fact, gunfire. So, the first way is just by the nature of the way the sensors are deployed. They’re spread out over a large area. It’s not really a filter, but you might think of that as spatial filtering, because our system is only triggered when three or more sensors detect a loud impulsive sound. So, if you went outside, and slammed your car door, it might make an impulsive sound, but it’s not going to reach three sensors spread out over that area.
[00:12:03] If you went out and screamed at the top of your lungs, that sound might be able to reach three or more sensors, but it’s not an impulsive sound. And so, our system is only triggered when three or more sensors detect a loud, impulsive sound, like a bang, a boom, or a pop. And then the system goes through a process of locating where that sound originated from to your question, we are quite precise. Our system locates to a precise latitude and longitude. To account for things like, the diffraction around buildings, we set our margin of error at 25 meters. So, for frame of reference, that’s about how far an adult can throw a baseball. So, if you stood in the middle of a circle and threw a baseball, in that circle is where we guarantee, the gunfire has originated from.
[00:12:52] And we do give guarantees to our customers. Our guarantee is 90%. No system that operates in the dynamic real world, as ours does, could ever be 100%, but we do set a high standard. We carefully track metrics. We report those to our customers. We report them to all of our customers, and we give them a financial incentive to provide us feedback.
[00:13:15] If we make mistakes and don’t meet the 90 percent threshold, guarantee that we give them. They pay us less. And so, they’re encouraged to provide us feedback. Let us know when we make mistakes so we can use that information to make the performance of the system better and measuring that performance across all of our customers over many years.
[00:13:35] We know that we keep an accuracy rate of about 97 percent, and so that’s pretty good. occasionally the system, will miss a shooting that actually occurs. There can be reasons for that. Our system has limitations. It’s only designed to detect outdoor gunfire. So, gunfire that occurred in an enclosure like in a home or a car may not be loud enough to reach our sensors or gunfire that occurred with a silenced firearm, a silencer, might not produce a loud enough report to reach our sensors. But to your question, it’s very accurate and it’s very fast and those things matter and matter, from academic research it pays big dividends for the police. They use the system and the communities that benefit from it.
[00:14:23] Joe Selvaggi: So, I want to unpack all the things you just mentioned. I just want to make a fine point on the precision. You say, you locate it, but you also mentioned there’s all kinds of things you don’t detect or detect but you don’t identify as gunfire. I’ve heard it alleged that things like firework and let’s face it a firecracker is an explosion like a rifle round or a gunshot or slamming car doors or as you say I’m not so much concerned about someone yelling but there’s all kinds of things that sound gun like. Would you consider let’s say a balloon popping or a garage door slamming or a firework going off? If you identify that would be considered an error, right? If you arrived and you saw fireworks, that would be scored as, we thought it was gunfire, it was a noise, but it wasn’t a gun. Would that be a mistake, or would that just be par for the course?
[00:15:14] Tom Chittum: So, let me clarify how that works. If we published it to the police and said, this was gunfire, but it was not. That would be a mistake. That our system detects it is not a mistake. Our system detects loud, impulsive sounds. But then we go through a process of filtering. So, I mentioned the spatial filtering.
[00:15:33] The point of that is just that the sense system covers a wide area. And so only, impulsive sounds of a sufficiently loud character will trigger the system to even detect and locate where it occurred. Once it does that, we use a patented process for filtering out sounds that are not characteristic of gunfire. Again, that patent is right there on our, website. It’s a public record. Anyone who wants to look at how we’re doing this, The system is very good at filtering out sounds that are not likely gunfire, but everything that has characteristics of gunfire then goes through a human review process where they do additional filtering to remove sounds that are not gunfire, and only after those trained reviewers determine that the sound is, in fact, gunfire, does it get published.
[00:16:26] And so there’s a number of levels of review. And there’s a big misunderstanding about what it is that our reviewers and our system is doing. Some people think that they only use their ears, that they just listen to a sound and try and guess whether it’s a firework or a firearm, but that’s not it. they also use their ears. They’re listening for clues. That it might be gunfire. Things like the cadence of gunfire, consistent, steady, strengths of the pulses that don’t overlap. They’re also using their ears to listen for audio clues that it is not gunfire. The whistling, sizzling. The popping of firecrackers, the inconsistent pulse strength, or overlapping pulses from a lot of firecrackers being lit.
[00:17:11] But they’re also looking at things like situational factors. If it’s 3 a.m. in a residential area, it’s not likely road construction. They are looking at sensor participation. Because our sensors are spread out over an area, we can determine the shape of the fire. of the propagation of the sound. And sound propagates omnidirectional, which is just a fancy way of saying it spreads out in all directions at the same speed. Think of it like a bubble expanding. But the way gunfire is made tends to be very directional. And so, our reviewers will assess the shape of the sensor participation. Is it linear, conical, versus encircling the sound? They’ll also look for things like distance to the nearest sensor. It reports that sort of information too. The sound of gunfire will travel further. And there are a number of other factors that they’re looking at too, so when people are told it just hears loud sounds and publishes them, that’s just evidence that either they want to mislead someone about how our system works or they simply don’t understand it.
[00:18:15] Joe Selvaggi: So, these, trained listeners, who could have many ways to analyze the sound, that you just outlined, are they your employees or are they people you train, for the benefit of the city so they can use your technology better?
[00:18:26] Tom Chittum: They are our employees. So, we maintain an incident review center. It is operational 24 -7, 365, and has been for more than 12 years, and they review every alert before it gets published for our customers. Because we are controlling those processes, we can maintain very strict metrics on their performance and keep a high and consistent standard across all of our customers.
[00:18:55] Joe Selvaggi: Maybe this is a sort of a too deep question or too leading of a question, but how does the accuracy translate into identifying gun related crime? Meaning, do you measure your accuracy against just gunshots, which I can’t imagine good benevolent reasons for gunshots going off in the middle of the city. But how well does that translate into gun related crime? Meaning, you don’t know whether the gun is being shot for fun or, bank robbery. How, how does that translate into, law enforcement, police? The effectiveness of the cops catching actual criminals doing crimes?
[00:19:32] Tom Chittum: Well, that’s a great question, Joe. So, when we publish an alert of gunfire, for us, it goes into the ether. We don’t know if it is celebratory gunfire or homicidal gunfire.
[00:19:49] I like to tell people that we can alert police to the what, the when, and the where of gunfire, but not the who. That requires them to respond and investigate. They provide us, feedback when the incident involved an officer, and so we have records of those. But most of the time, we don’t know what was on the other side, and so it really is up to the police to track those metrics, how often are they recovering evidence? How often are they locating gunshot wound victims? How often are they making arrests? There are a number of different metrics. They’re not all created equal. And what we see is there are a lot of factors that influence those rates too. What are the best practices that the department employs?
[00:20:34] How quickly are they responding? How much time are they spending on the scene when they get there? And so, from our perspective, that 97 percent really does depend on our customers letting us know when we make mistakes. It happens sometimes, not much. Occasionally, a shooting will occur and for whatever reason, our system won’t detect it. And our customers will say, hey, we have this gunshot wound victim. You missed it. What happened? And we’ll look at it and try and assess why that happened and that’s how our system performs. But again, measuring across 170 ish customers over many years and literally millions of incidents, we know that we keep a very high accuracy rate, in the high 90s.
[00:21:22] Joe Selvaggi: Well, that’s great. And the answer to your question brought to me one of the questions I wanted to ask perhaps earlier, but I noted at the top of the show that your title is Senior Vice President of Forensics. And some of your answers suggest forensic analysis, looking at what happened, taking apart the sounds and saying what really went on here. Does your title as Senior Vice President of Forensics suggest your expertise is used in a court of law, either for criminal or civil trials?
[00:21:48] Tom Chittum: Yeah. So, I am an attorney. I’m a licensed attorney. I have been for many years, but I didn’t always work as an attorney. Before I came to work for Sound Thinking, what was Shot Spotter when I joined it, I actually worked for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Farms, Explosives, the ATF. I was an ATF agent for almost all of my adult life. I started out as a plain old agent in the streets working cases, but I worked my way up to the top. Through the ranks and when I retired in 22, I was the deputy director of the agency. I was the chief operating officer and that gave me a lot of opportunity to travel across the country talking to law enforcement leaders, elected officials, the public, the media.
[00:22:30] About how law enforcement can use the tools, the tactics, the technology of crime gun intelligence to do a better job of investigating gun crime. Because of that, I knew about Shot Spotter. At the time, though, it wasn’t so obvious to me the role it would play in the courtroom. Prior to coming to this company, I had only read one book. Court case about Shot Spotter. It involved the attempted murder of an ATF agent in Chicago. This agent was shot in the head. He survived. I believe he is indestructible. But Shot Spotter evidence was used in his trial to convict the gang member that shot him. Now that I’m here, though, I realize that Shot Spotter very often ends up in court.
[00:23:16] And so to your question, my role here is helping make sure that the evidence that our system produces is used effectively in court. And I make that point, without specifying prosecution or defense. Occasionally people We’ll assume that because we have contractual relationships largely with police agencies, we have some sort of pro law enforcement, pro prosecution bias, but that’s just not true. Our evidence is our evidence, and it is sometimes used by defense effectively in court too. That’s up to the attorneys to argue about what the evidence means. It’s our place just to say what the evidence is. And so, I oversee a team of professionals who appear in court and testify about what Shot Spotter detected. They’ve testified in over 300 cases in 24 states, and despite what some would lead you to believe, courts overwhelmingly acknowledge shot spotter as an appropriate and a unique factor in assessing things like reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, and they’ll also admit Shot Spotter evidence for its scientific value as well.
[00:24:31] Joe Selvaggi: So, let’s test your, bona fides as an honest broker here. If you, we’ve been talking about all the virtues of the technology, where might it be vulnerable to misuse? if it’s capabilities, but also its limitations and you testify on behalf of both, what would you say would, what are the limits? What can’t it do? What, where are its blind spots, if you will, or deaf spots, I suppose would be a better analogy. What, share with our listeners where it might be vulnerable.
[00:24:58] Tom Chittum: Well, so, I mentioned before that we can tell you the what, the when, and the where, not the who. Sometimes we can tell you the how, and I can give you an example of that. So, once we alert police to a shooting incident, it is really up to them to decide what to do. To use it effectively, one of the criticisms that sometimes people will make is that somehow Shot Spotter violates civil rights, and they’re often talking about this idea of stop and frisk policing. Shot Spotter says gunfire occurred here.
[00:25:32] Then it’s up to the police to go there and investigate. And when they do, they have to develop their independent, reasonable suspicion of criminal activity if they’re going to detain someone. This is America. You are free to go about your business without interference from police. But the Supreme Court has said that if police have reasonable suspicion to believe that you’re engaged in criminal activity, they can temporarily detain you while they investigate.
[00:25:57] If they have a reasonable suspicion to believe that you’re armed, they can conduct a pat down. for a weapon. and if that happens, and if police make an arrest, then as every criminal defendant in America does, that person has a right to challenge that evidence. on the stand. Shot Spotter’s role in that is limited we can say that gunfire occurred here at this time, but after that it’s up to the police. And so, I would say that those are the limitations of the system. We can’t tell you what the person who shot the gun was wearing, or driving, or where they went after the shooting, unless they shoot again. And very often we do detect multiple shooting incidents that are related. So those are the limitations of the technology. I don’t think, though, that’s a surprise. If you look at how law enforcement does its job, there’s no single tool that it can rely on. There are lots of tools in the toolbox. Ours is simply one, and that’s what it does.
[00:26:57] Joe Selvaggi: So, I want to go deeper again and press you a little harder there, because they say, okay, I appreciate that we don’t lose our rights merely because a shot was heard near us, right? We’re, our rights are not diminished by a Shot Shotter, in theory. But let’s imagine a policeman hears, or your technology tells the police that it has heard a shot being fired in a particular location. The police arrive. They know something bad, a shot was fired. So, you’ve got all kinds of people in every direction. They know a gun has gone off. So, immediately, their level of suspicion is higher, and also, it’s not just, they’re not spitting on the sidewalk, they’re firing guns, so they know somebody there is armed. Doesn’t that turn everybody’s spidey sense up to 11 and say, okay, everybody here is guilty until I determine they’re innocent. Isn’t this sort of inviting police to arrive, assume guilt broadly, and assume deadly force, potentially, there? It, to me, yes, of course their legal rights are not diminished, but the suspicion level is automatically higher given that you happen to be, let’s say, in the wrong place at the wrong time when a gun went off. What would you say to that? I know it’s a big question, but I’m sure our listeners are thinking it.
[00:28:06] Tom Chittum: Yeah, well, I think it’s a fair question. so, for one, I think it takes a little bit of a cynical view of law enforcement. I have been around policing my entire adult life. And what I have found is that most police are genuinely good people. Some of them are absolute heroes, but most of them just want to do a good job. They know that their work will be scrutinized in court. I think that the level of training that they get matters. but if you’ll look at the cases where Shot Spotter has been used, you’ll see that there is lots of information that police can rely on.
[00:28:42] First, let’s start with the alert itself. When we send an alert to our customers, we send audio with it. They can listen to the gunfire for themselves, and then we tell them a precise location. We’ll also include helpful tactical intelligence, like if an incident involved fully automatic gunfire or a large number of rounds being fired, so that they can prepare for that.
[00:29:07] Appropriately. Now, contrast a Shot Spotter alert to what happens with a 911 call, and I think it’s important to point out that, very often, no 911 calls come in at all. That’s one of the big gaps that Shot Spotter helps fill. But if a 911 call comes in, very often that caller has limited information. They say, I heard what I think was gunfire. It happened what I think sounded like out front. They can’t say if it’s on that block, or two blocks over, or three blocks over, the sound of gunfire will travel a long distance. So, in those situations, when, police only have a 911 call without specific details, they have no choice but to swarm the area, rove around, and see if they see something that looks suspicious.
[00:29:51] A Shot Spotter, however, gives them a precise location to start from. Now once they get there, their investigation must start, and sometimes it’s as simple as making contact with you, with people that you encounter, and say, hey, we got a report of gunfire. Did you see anything? Did you hear anything? very often, witnesses will say, yes, there was shooting, the person was wearing this or that. And so the limitation of the technology is only that we’re detecting the sound, we’re deploying them there, but what police do after that It’s up to the police, and I think, and I’ve said this many times, I don’t know that there’s been a more difficult time to be a cop, than it is today, right? The public expects the police to be faster, fairer, more transparent, more effective than ever before. But I actually don’t have a problem with that. I don’t think that the public should ever be able to hold law enforcement to a standard higher than it should hold to today itself too. And what I think we see is that a lot of police agencies are effectively using it. They’re honest brokers. They’re following the constitutional obligations that they have, and they’re only making stops when they can articulate the reasonable suspicion that Supreme Court says they must have.
[00:31:05] Joe Selvaggi: Yes, no one envies the role of a policeman, particularly in these days, this day and age. As you say, now that we have cameras and close scrutiny, police must be on their best behavior. All the time. Nevertheless, if we’re talking about, a case where suddenly, cops arrive and, let’s say they, they’ve been told by you that a shot was fired, And there’s no evidence we, they can’t figure out what happened and they do start, catching people and someone runs away and accidentally is shot, they maybe were, I don’t know, a low level drug, deal or something and they run and the police make the assumption that, that was the shooter and perhaps used deadly force on this person. How can you, deal with the, let’s say, either the political repercussions or the PR repercussions? At some level, the police wouldn’t have been there but for a shot spot or, and something bad happened. How do you inoculate yourself from what, it seems to me, inevitable that these kinds of occasions will happen? You don’t have to point to any particular case or any particular city where this may have happened, but what do you do in that situation?
[00:32:06] Tom Chittum: Well, look, I think it is awful when, police make mistakes that result in a wrongful death. As you point out, police have a lot of contact with a lot of people, and thankfully, the number of unjustifiable shootings is really low. To suggest that police wouldn’t have been there but for shot spotter, I think minimizes all of the other times where the police response was lifesaving, helped hold somebody accountable, helped get justice for a crime gun victim. Occasionally our critics will point to a couple of outlier incidents.
[00:32:42] There is one specific one, really only one in Chicago involving a young man. named Adam Toledo. Terrible circumstances. He was only 13 years old. but Shot Spotter did what Shot Spotter is supposed to do. It detected gunfire. Adam Toledo and the person he was with, were shooting in the middle of the night in, this area of Chicago and police responded.
[00:33:05] But once they got there, the shooting that occurred was really not something that Shot Spotter, was responsible for. And I would ask the question, do you think police should not respond when someone is shooting? the outlier example like that, though, really is that. And it does not minimize the hundreds of times that ShotSpotter locates gunshot wound victims, allows police to render aid, allows them to make arrests of actual shootings.
[00:33:33] In fact, you see it in Boston. If you look at headlines all across America about Shot Spotter, and you can remove the ones that are only opinion based, what you are left with is example after example of police responding to a shot spotter alert and finding gunshot wound victims, arresting offenders. And it’s because the technology really works. We are not simply getting lucky all of those times. We are alerting police to gunfire. And when shootings occur in urban areas, Timely response is important. Occasionally, the police are going to make mistakes, and that’s awful, and we should hold them to a high account. But that is not something that is Shot Spotter’s fault. Police should be investigating shooting incidents.
[00:34:18] Joe Selvaggi: Now, I’ve tried to, test you on all the sort of aspects or the sort of common criticisms of your technology, but I do want to acknowledge that there, again, I learned about this in my research, that there are, lawsuits or, made by, let’s say, the ACLU about, the general gist of their arguments is that, civil liberties are being violated. People are being over policed, or they’re being assumed to be guilty unnecessarily by virtue of the fact that they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether the shop herd was a valid one or not. Even if we assert that it was valid, it doesn’t make the people in the neighborhood any more suspicious than otherwise. I want to leave an open-ended question. Points do lawsuits like those from the ACLU make that I haven’t yet addressed? Where do they see weakness in your technology that I haven’t, tested you on? Well, in some ways,
[00:35:06] Tom Chittum: I think their argument is really a proxy argument. It’s not really Shot Spotter that they’re opposed to. It’s policing that they’re opposed to, and Shot Spotter is a convenient proxy for that. I think their complaint is about what some people will refer to as stop and frisk policing. And I understand that. Stop and frisk policing means that police see someone, they stop them, they pat them down for a weapon. As we talked about earlier, the Supreme Court has said, when police have reasonable suspicion to believe that a person is engaged in criminal activity, they can stop temporarily detain someone, and they can pat them down if they have reasonable suspicion to believe they have a weapon. The problem is when they stop and pat down people when they do not have reasonable suspicion that person is carrying a firearm and that would be unconstitutional in and of itself. They, I think sometimes, accuse ShotSpotter of blanketing areas with reasonable suspicion, but that simply isn’t how our technology works. Our technology locates to a precise latitude and longitude. And what the courts have said is when police show up, there are a lot of other factors that they should be assessing close spatial and temporal proximity is one. How quickly do police get there? How close is the person that they observed to where the shot spot or alert was? But there are a lot of other factors too. If a person is standing alone in that area, it’s different than if they’re being plucked from a crowd witness statement may corroborate what has happened there. And so, police have this challenging task of assessing Reasonable suspicion in stopping someone. You mentioned earlier a person that engages in unprovoked flight. They see the police, they turn, and run is one factor that police may assess.
[00:36:51] And frankly, I think police do a good job generally. the challenge with stop and frisk policing in theory, police, one, want to catch people that are illegally carrying firearms, and two, they want to, create this perception that carrying an illegal firearm is risky because police may stop you and pat you down. The downside to painting with such a broad brush is the effect it has on public support for policing. And I think that’s an important point to emphasize. The trust in law enforcement is absolutely crucial. You pointed out that gunfire is not spread evenly across our cities. It’s pretty localized.
[00:37:36] And very often people in that area know who’s responsible for the shootings, but if they don’t have faith in the police, if they don’t feel that what will happen when they call police will be just, then they won’t call, then they won’t cooperate, and I think Shot Spotter actually can help improve that too. So when shootings occur and police respond timely, it can reassure the community that police care. So, I don’t think we dug into it, but we know from research that 80 percent or more of gunfire in urban areas goes unreported to police through 911. Some of the reasons why are just practical. Many shootings happen in the middle of the night and law-abiding citizens are asleep. They may be awakened, but they don’t know exactly what it was they heard, and so they don’t call. But sometimes there are heartbreaking reasons. Some people have grown numb to the sound of gunfire and have just resigned themselves to living with it, or they think police don’t care and wouldn’t come anyways.
[00:38:36] But even though we know 4 out of 5 shootings go unreported, the average citizen doesn’t know that. And so, they hear gunfire, they look out their window, and they don’t see police show up. They think police know, but they don’t know, so they don’t come, and people lose faith. And ShotSpotter helps fill that gap and brings police there when shootings occur. And even when there is no gunshot wound victim located, and even when there’s no offender, arrested, there’s still value in having contact with the community. Knocking on doors, saying, hey, we got a report of gunfire. Just want to make sure everyone’s okay. Did you see anything? Did you hear anything? And I think low friction contacts like that can help reassure the majority of the people that live in those communities who are law abiding and who do want to see police response, that police do actually care about them.
[00:39:23] Joe Selvaggi: Yes, it’s curious to me that an organization like the ACLU that seems, its abiding concern is civil liberties, that they seem to ignore the civil liberties of the victims of crimes, right? Like, of course, we’re, I haven’t really pegged you for, pinned you down on the fact that these censors are primarily located in marginalized communities. Of course, as you say, it’s because that’s where crime happens. But of course, the people in the marginalized communities are also, are marginalized. They’re the victims of the crime that the wealthy are not being shot at. It’s often the most vulnerable. It seems odd that we are more concerned about the rights of potential criminals, and their obvious victims. I think there’s something like 20,000 murders in 2020, with guns, that’s a lot of people, so, what would you say, though, to critics that say, well, this invites over policing, now, where these signals would not have been picked up, now they are picked up, and now the police are everywhere, and people in those communities, unfortunately, you’ve got to do something about it gunshots, but they’re going to be, shaken down and brought in on, on other charges, meaning everybody in these communities is going to get locked up because someone fired a gun. What would you say to, so people who are, reflexively, concerned about, quote unquote, over policing in these communities?
[00:40:33] Tom Chittum: Well, there’s a couple of things that you mentioned there. For one, I am baffled. I really have been baffled by some of the opposition. As you mentioned, it seems that they are far more concerned about people being arrested than they are people being killed, and I just don’t understand that mindset. I also think that this perception of over-policing is largely overblown. But, to your point about gunfire not being spread everywhere, I wish that Shot Spotter was deployed all across America. If you cannot deploy it everywhere though, of course you will deploy it in the place where it can do the greatest good. And you talk about the impact in certain marginalized communities. I think an analogy is helpful. it’s well documented that Fire related deaths, not firearm, fire related deaths also occur in underprivileged, marginalized communities. And that’s because there has been disinvestment in public safety infrastructure in places like that.
[00:41:35] Shot Spotter is public safety infrastructure. The fact that it is deployed in the places where communities see the greatest gunfire, I think, is something that should be celebrated. It’s an investment in infrastructure that can help save lives. And there’s another point to make, when police respond, at a base level, Shot Spotter is just a basis for them to start an investigation. I mentioned that some of them are the rudimentary investigations. That a patrol officer would conduct. They show up to an area, they make contact with people they find, and say, hey, we got a report of gunfire. Did you see anything? Did you hear anything? but what we know from research is if police contribute, adequate follow up investigative resources to shooting incidents, they can increase their clearance rate. Now it makes sense that as a country we focus on homicide, right? That’s our worst crime and so we expect police to put the most effort into solving those. But what research shows is if they also put that sort of effort into non-fatal shootings, they can increase their clearance rate for that type of shooting, too. Non-fatal shootings are often just a failed homicide. And if you arrest and hold those offenders accountable, you prevent other shootings that they would commit. And we know that a very small number of people are responsible for most shootings. And one final point I would make. The failure to address Violent crime, in the communities where it happens most often, is, in my opinion, itself a root cause of crime.
[00:43:13] When criminals who commit violent crime feel emboldened and think they won’t be held accountable, they will commit more. And when people in those communities feel despair and don’t cooperate because they think it’s hopeless, the rate of crime increases. The quality of their life decreases. And so, I think adequately staffing, training, and supporting law enforcement, giving them tools like Shot Spotter, but other tools like ballistic imaging, focusing on improving critical tools like community support really can do a lot to reduce the crime that occurs in the communities where it happens most often. I like sitting on my front porch. I think everyone in America should feel safe sitting on theirs.
[00:44:00] Joe Selvaggi: Yes, indeed. I couldn’t agree more. I say, I don’t know how well you know Boston. I live in a neighborhood called Beacon Hill. I am certain if there was a gunshot in Beacon Hill, the Army, Navy, and Air Force Marines would be on top of it.
[00:44:09] And they would take it very seriously and they’d find the guy. That we tolerate gunshots in other communities, marginalized communities, is beyond comprehension for me. We should have zero tolerance and use any tool in our toolkit to identify. And as you mentioned, again, we maybe hit this idea too hard. Crime isn’t widespread and evenly distributed through all cities and all communities and all neighborhoods. It’s very narrowly, committed by a very few number of very determined criminals. It’s not, we’re not just finding criminals where we look. They happen to be in a particular area and you’re, and you’re looking in the right spot, now, you probably, we’re getting to the end of the time together. You hinted at the future, but I want to ask you, beyond, of course, you, you are a member of a company that you, you want to, grow your business. and so, I say you have, an incentive to want to have, Shot Spotter, everywhere.
[00:44:59] That said, let’s assume it’s not efficient, it’s not feasible. What do you see in the future of Shot Spotter or the technology like it? Do you think, again, you suggest that success begets success and failure begets failure. If we don’t catch criminals, they commit more crimes and become more emboldened. The flip side is if we lock people with guns, we all become safer and it’s a virtuous circle. What do you see the future of Shot Spotter and the future of being able to combat violent crime in the United States?
[00:45:24] Tom Chittum: So, I have three things to say. The third one will be the answer to your question. As to your previous comments, I don’t live in Boston, but I did visit recently to appear on a news program. And while I was there, I walked up to Beacon Hill. And bought a book at a bookstore. It seemed like a very safe community to me. You talked about crime not being spread everywhere, but I think it’s also important to emphasize another fact.
[00:45:51] Even though it’s concentrated in certain communities, those communities are not criminal. There are a lot of law-abiding people in those communities who want safe communities to live in. It’s a small number of people in a small number of places. And so, police really need to focus on those people in those places. That’s precision policing, and it’s something that Shot Spotter lends itself well to. You asked about the future of the company. So, as an attorney and in my role here, overseeing forensic services, every morning I get an alert about cases, case law that has mentioned Shot Spotter. This says something about me, how excited I am to read those every morning, but for months and months when I do get alerts.
[00:46:39] It’s cases that mention Shot Spotter, one time. Shots, police responded to a Shot Spotter alert, and then the case is about something entirely different. Sometimes these cases. I’ve mentioned Shot Spotter twice when there’s a footnote that says Shot Spotter is an acoustic gunshot detection system. My point for saying that is I believe that Shot Spotter is becoming routine evidence in criminal prosecutions. And I think that is a good thing. Much like the other technology, that can help make communities safer, like cameras, like ballistic imaging. what may seem newfangled really isn’t. It is, of course, important that we have appropriate policies and oversight. I also think it’s important to bring transparency to what law enforcement are doing.
[00:47:26] I don’t believe in secret policing. It’s part of the reason that we as a company very often appear in public on programs like this. To talk about what it is we do because we want the public to be informed, but I think they should be informed honestly. And when they do, I think that they will see that this is not controversial technology at all.
[00:47:45] It’s absolutely essential. It’s one tool and toolbox that can help make law enforcement more effective, can create safer communities, can hold offenders accountable, and, and can save lives. And let me conclude by mentioning that. Too often, our critics are focused on arrests, and while it is true that Shot Spotter alerts often do lead to arrests for gun related crimes, that’s not the system’s highest use. When gunfire occurs, very often there are gunshot wound victims left behind, and when you are shot, time is of the essence, and Shot Spotter gives police and first responders a precise location to get to. And we know from the experience of many of our customers that very often, Shot Spotter is the only thing that alerts them to a shooting that caused a wound.
[00:48:37] For instance, in a single year in Oakland, California, Shot Spotter led to a hundred gunshot wound victims where there was no corresponding 911 call. Those are people who would not get aid. But for the shot spotter alert. Now many of those gunshot wounds are not life threatening, and they will not die, but some of them are. And in fact, there was very recently a case like that in the Boston area, a man was shot in Dorchester, Shot Spotter alerted police, they responded. They rendered aid to him. He had life threatening injuries. The subsequent investigation allowed them to make an arrest related to that shooting. And I think that, at the end of the day, is exactly what Shot Spotter is there to do. To help police be effective, to save lives, to hold people accountable.
[00:49:22] Joe Selvaggi: Indeed. I’ll leave it there. Again, I think all of our listeners imagine a future where gun related crime is no more, this seems to be a scientific, objective, reasonable, tool to get us there, and is, that some Americans can’t walk their streets and feel safe is a tragedy and I think your technology will help Boston and other residents of cities around the country and around the globe to feel a little bit better and a little safer. Thank you very much, Tom, for joining me on Hubwonk today. You’ve been a fund of information and really, I think, have helped dispel a lot of the myths that are starting to float around, around this, what I consider really promising technology. Thank you for joining me.
Tom Chittum: Thanks for having me, Joe. I really appreciate it.
Joe Selvaggi: This has been another episode of Hubwonk. If you enjoyed today’s show, there are several ways to support Hubwonk and Pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us if you subscribed to Hubwonk on your iTunes Podcatcher. It would make it easier for others to find Hubwonk if you offer a five star rating or a favorable review. Of course, we’re grateful if you share Hubwonk with friends. If you have ideas or comments or suggestions for me about future episode topics, you’re certainly welcome to email me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute. org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
Joe Selvaggi talks with SoundThinking’s Senior Vice President Tom Chittum about gunfire location technology promises and pitfalls when deployed by law enforcement in high-crime communities.
Guest:
Tom Chittum is a lawyer, leader, and public safety executive dedicated to enhancing justice and safety in America. He is a licensed attorney and Senior Vice President at SoundThinking, a public safety technology company, where he leads a team using data and forensic tools to combat gun crime. A retired federal agent and former Associate Deputy Director of the ATF, Chittum has over 27 years of experience in law enforcement, he has conducted and overseen thousands of investigations and frequently testified as an expert witness. An adjunct professor at UNLV’s Boyd School of Law, he teaches “Firearms Law & the Second Amendment” and regularly speaks on crime and policing. Chittum holds degrees from Marshall University, Eastern Kentucky University, and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. He is licensed to practice law in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”
“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”
“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
Construction costs, land use regulation and zoning among the reasons why housing development lags growth in jobs, number of households
BOSTON – A new Pioneer Institute study recommends that municipal leaders employ strategies like density bonuses and expedited permitting to prioritize the construction of family-oriented housing in urban areas to combat high prices and supply shortages resulting from decades of insufficient housing development.
“Across the country, housing production has been low since the 2008 financial crisis,” said Andrew Mikula, author of “Supply Stagnation: The Root Cause of Greater Boston’s Housing Crisis and How to Fix It.” “The housing crisis is especially acute in Boston because supply in the region never bounced back from the 1991 recession.”
As of last November, the median down payment on a house in Greater Boston was $105,300 – more than the region’s annual median income. The cost of building a typical “starter home” in Massachusetts is 22 percent above the national average – the second highest in the nation.
As of June 2023, the average monthly rent in the City of Boston topped $3,000.
High housing costs are one of the primary reasons that residents are leaving in droves, fleeing to more affordable locations. Those between 26 and 35 years old, who are just forming families, are the most likely to leave.
From 2010 to 2020, the number of households in Greater Boston increased by 10.7 percent while the number of housing units only rose 7.9 percent. Not surprisingly, the region’s vacancy rate is consistently well below the national average.
Among the reasons why this trend is likely to continue is Baby Boomers’ desire to “age in place” rather than move in with family members or move to group settings.
From 2002 to 2022, Greater Boston added 3.3 jobs for every housing permit that was granted. The recommended range is from 0.75 to 1.5 jobs for every permit. Nationally, the number of homes that were permitted but haven’t begun construction has reached a 39-year high.
There are a number of reasons why housing production is down across the U.S. and in the Boston area. Nationally, the cost of construction materials was 43 percent higher at the start of this year than in January 2020. A construction labor shortage also places upward pressure on costs. At $333,200 in 2023, the cost of an acre of land in Massachusetts is second only to Rhode Island.
Land use regulations and zoning also contribute to low production and high costs. Despite high population density in Massachusetts, lot sizes are larger than average. Some Boston suburbs require owners to have an acre or more of contiguous land to build a house.
Rules like parking requirements for new developments can be out of step with residents’ needs. Most Brookline zoning districts require two off-street parking spaces for each residential unit, even though only 24 percent of town residents have access to two or more vehicles.
Politically, housing development is difficult because the loudest voices in the debate tend to be existing homeowners who want to protect their property values and officials concerned with rising school budgets. Despite popular belief, numerous studies demonstrate that new construction doesn’t measurably impact surrounding property values and that multi-family homes in particular tend to be fiscally positive. In addition, declining enrollments in many Boston suburbs should reduce concerns about school overcrowding.
Proposed solutions that don’t address the underlying supply issue are unlikely to help advance housing availability and affordability. The best known such policy is rent control. One study found that San Francisco landlords subject to rent control reduced their rental housing stock by 15 percent.
In addition to advocating for density bonuses and expedited permitting, Mikula’s recommendations include diversifying suburban housing by rezoning to accommodate more townhouses, multi-family housing and rentals for young families.
Mikula also cites Federal Housing Choice Vouchers (formerly known as “Section 8 vouchers”) as an effective tool.
Andrew Mikula is a Housing Fellow at Pioneer Institute. Beyond housing, Andrew’s research areas of interest include urban planning, economic development, and regulatory reform. He holds a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
This week on The Learning Curve co-hosts U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng and Steven Wilson interview Kimberly Steadman, co-director of Edward Brooke Charter Schools. Steadman reflects on her educational background and leadership in urban charter public schools. She discusses the importance of rigorous academic expectations for K-12 students, and how this outlook influences her educational philosophy co-directing the Brooke charter school network. Ms. Steadman shares the challenges faced by Massachusetts charters due to the post-2016 ballot loss, and how she and other charter public school leaders advance supportive policy reforms.
Stories of the Week: Albert shared an article from The New York Times sharing the impact of Socrates, Plato, and liberal arts in higher education; Steven discussed a news story in The Hill on ‘national tutoring corps’ to fix education gaps.
Guest:
Kimberly Steadman joined Brooke Charter Schools in 2004 as a math teacher and professional development coordinator. Since then, she founded Brooke’s first elementary school and co-led the expansion of Brooke from one campus to five. Ms. Steadman is currently serving as network co-director and holds responsibility for all academic aspects of Brooke. Before coming to Brooke, she taught 4th grade in the D.C. Public Schools and 5th grade in Chelsea Public Schools. Ms. Steadman earned a B.A. at Harvard College; a J.D. from Harvard Law School; and an M.Ed. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Tweet of the Week:
Click here to read a transcript
[00:00:00] Joe Selvaggi: This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi. Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. Memorial Day marks the start of summer and an attending rise in gun related crime, particularly affecting marginalized communities in cities nationwide, including Boston. One tool that has emerged to help law enforcement address gunfire is ShotSpotter, a network of sensors placed in high crime areas.
[00:00:28] These sensors enable police to triangulate the sounds of gunshots and respond swiftly. Before ShotSpotter’s deployment, about 80 percent of urban gunfire incidents went unreported, hindering criminal investigations and timely aid to victims. However, critics of sound thinking, the company behind ShotSpotter, are concerned that the technology could lead to over policing in vulnerable communities.
[00:00:53] U. S. Senator from Massachusetts Ed Markey has requested the Department of Homeland Security investigate the use of ShotSpotter for potential violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against Sound Thinking, alleging that the technology disproportionately targets communities of color and results in unfair policing.
[00:01:15] How does ShotSpotter work? How is it deployed? And how well can it address public concerns for its accuracy and precision to allay fears that its use unfairly targets vulnerable communities for illegal searches or arrests? My guest today is Tom Chittum, Senior Vice President of Forensics at Sound Thinking and former Associate Deputy Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
[00:01:39] Mr. Chittum, an attorney with over 27 years of law enforcement experience, has conducted and overseen thousands of investigations and frequently testified as an expert witness. He will discuss the capabilities and limitations of ShotSpotter technology, the criteria used to select sensor deployment locations and how ShotSpotter enhances police department’s ability to respond to gun crime. He will also address the concerns for civil rights and liberties of his critics by describing how the tools are a complement and not a substitute for high quality law enforcement practices. When I return, I’ll be joined by Senior Vice President of Sound Thinking, Tom Chittum.
[00:02:17] Okay, we’re back. This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi, and I’m now pleased to be joined by Sound Thinking’s Senior Vice President of Forensics, Tom Chittum. Welcome to Hubwonk, Tom. I appreciate you having me. Great. Well, I’m thrilled to have you on the show. your firm’s technology has been in our news recently when our, our junior senator from Massachusetts, Senator Ed Markey, wrote a letter, recently wrote a letter to Homeland Security, asking for an investigation into grant funding for your Shot Spotter technology.
[00:02:44] Your firm’s name is, Sound Thinking, but the technology’s shot spotter. the concerns, Senator Markey had were that your technology as it’s deployed. May run afoul of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I’ll just state for our listeners who don’t know that, particular Civil Rights Act, it’s, “no person in the United States shall on the ground of race, color, or national origin be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
[00:03:15] So his letter was also signed by another of our senators, Senator Elizabeth Warren and our representative Ayanna Pressley. So, for that reason, I wanted to have you on the show to talk about the technology, how it’s designed, how it’s deployed. And, frankly, with our listeners discuss the promise and pitfalls of the technology so they can form their own decisions.
[00:03:33] So, as our listeners know, I like to start at the beginning in a very basic level, with, a brief description of what ShotSpotter technology is, and what does it do? So, let’s start there.
[00:03:44] Tom Chittum: Sure. Well, if you had asked me before I knew how ShotSpotter worked, I would have had to guess that it was powered by magic, because how could it possibly do what it claims to do?
[00:03:58] But I know now that it is not magic at all. In fact, its basic math, science, and technology that’s been harnessed for public safety good. And the company has an interesting background, and I think we may talk about that, but at a base level, our system uses sensors that are spread out over a large area, they detect loud impulsive sounds like gunfire, and then we go through a process of calculating the time difference of arrival, the time that, that, sound reaches each of our sensors, we calculate the difference, and by doing that, we can determine where the sound came from.
[00:04:35] We also use some processes to sort out things that are not gunfire, so that what’s left behind is gunfire. We publish those to our customers, mostly the police, so they can respond quickly and precisely to where gunfire occurs. It does all of that in less than 60 seconds, and that matters because when you’re talking about gunshots in urban areas, very often time is of the essence.You’re dealing with gunshot wound victims, you’re dealing with ephemeral evidence. And so, police agencies all across the country use Shot Spotter as one tool along with other tools to help address gun violence.
[00:05:13] Joe Selvaggi: So that to me, sure, may sound like magic, but that may align, aligns with my own view of, let’s say, a GPS, how my phone knows where I am based on how my signal might bounce off of towers or satellites.
[00:05:24] So I think it’s, you’re doing very similar technology, with sound. Now I read it in some of the background that there may be as many as 34 individual patents in your technology. How did all of this technology begin? What are the origins of Shot Spotter?
[00:05:38] Tom Chittum: Well, it’s a great story. Dr. Bob Schoen, Dr. Bob, he still works for the company today, and he’s a great gentleman, in the mid-90s, could hear gunfire near his house. In California, it occurred to him that he might be able to use the same processes that earthquake scientists use to locate the epicenter of earthquakes. He might be able to use that to locate where the sound of the gunfire was coming from.
[00:06:04] And so he built a prototype, and he tested it and it worked. And that’s how Shot Spotter was born. Our headquarters is still in California, but as I mentioned, we’ve spread all across the country and now the globe. We’ve got international customers, too. More than 170, customers, rely on Shot Spotter to help them know where shootings occur, but it all started, from the idea that one man had. In his home in California, I had a recent occasion to sit down and talk with him, and he said during, some of the early tests, to see whether or not it could detect sounds, he had set up sensors on his house and some of his neighbors houses, and he would go outside and pop balloons to see if the sound would trigger it.
[00:06:49] The system now, of course, this is an early prototype. So don’t let that mislead you into thinking that the system is set off by balloons. But what he was doing was testing whether or not he could locate precisely where the sound was originating from. and he did. We do have a lot of patents. I said that it’s a simple system and it is, it’s very sophisticated in the way that it works, the data that we use to power it, but at base level it really relies on well-known and fairly simple scientific concepts.
[00:07:22] Joe Selvaggi: So, you mentioned briefly that it’s deployed, I think you said 170 different clients across the country and also internationally. Just briefly, name some of the big cities that are using it. I’m going to include Boston in there, but also maybe if there are other Massachusetts cities that have also used the technology.
[00:07:40] Tom Chittum: So, we’re deployed in major cities across the country. Presently, we’re still deployed in Chicago. We’re deployed in New York City. We’re deployed in Boston, but we’re also deployed in very small cities, too, and medium sized cities. And sometimes people think that ShotSpotter is only a tool for very large metropolitan areas, but the reality is gun violence affects communities in a lot of places in a lot of ways. And so, really in some places, even our smaller customers, end up being some of the best users because they have a manageable problem. They can respond effectively. And so, we’ve really seen it put to good use in a lot of places across the country.
[00:08:23] Joe Selvaggi: So, let’s focus on Boston again. I know you’re in DC now but I’m in Boston and it’s a big city, with lots of different neighborhoods. I want our listeners to understand when a city like Boston, which has a common police department, maybe lots of precincts, ahead of police, when they call you and say, we need your help. How do you decide where to put these sensors, these, this technology that’s listening for shots. You can’t put them everywhere. It’s a big city. Where do you, what happens next when you say, okay, let us help? Where do you decide to put the sensors?
[00:08:51] Tom Chittum: Well, we decide where to put the sensors, but we don’t necessarily decide where to put the coverage areas. So, when a customer approaches us, obviously it’s because they want to address the gun crime issues that they have. Look at objective historical data, things like reports of homicide, prior reports of gunfire, to try and determine those areas where the tool can do the greatest good. I wish ShotSpotter was deployed everywhere. There is a diminishing return on your investment if you’re deploying it in places where there is no gunfire. You pay for a service that doesn’t get used very often. Even still, there are some value in putting it in places like that where it serves as an early warning system for when incidents occur. For instance, we’re deployed on college campuses across the university where these low frequency high consequence events like school shootings may occur and where, timely intelligence is of the essence but, with respect to, police, departments and communities, we look at their, historical crime data. Where is it that they experience the most gunfire? Where have most people been killed by gunfire? And then it’s ultimately up to the customer to decide where the system should be deployed.
[00:10:17] Once that’s determined, the company itself deploys the sensors, and we keep those locations secret for a few reasons. So, we go out, we install them ourselves, we maintain them ourselves. But ultimately, it’s the customer who decides what area gets covered.
[00:10:34] Joe Selvaggi: Now, you already mentioned that it’s a very advanced technology, but it’s using sound. Cities are a noisy place. I know, I live in cities, always have, how precise can the, the sensors triangulate on where a particular gunshot is occurring. There’s echoes and all kinds of confounding noises. How precise? Are we talking about a neighborhood wide, block wide, or can you zero in on a precise location of where a shot was heard?
[00:11:02] Tom Chittum: Yeah, so, well, first, when you talk about the science behind it, you mentioned earlier that we have several patents. We post them on our website. We’ve also written academic papers explaining exactly what it is we’re doing. Some of them are quite dense for a layperson like me. I have to read them slowly to understand them.
[00:11:23] But we explain the science. It’s not secretive what it is that we are doing. And our system, uses several layers of filtering to make sure that the sounds that we are publishing to our customers are, in fact, gunfire. So, the first way is just by the nature of the way the sensors are deployed. They’re spread out over a large area. It’s not really a filter, but you might think of that as spatial filtering, because our system is only triggered when three or more sensors detect a loud impulsive sound. So, if you went outside, and slammed your car door, it might make an impulsive sound, but it’s not going to reach three sensors spread out over that area.
[00:12:03] If you went out and screamed at the top of your lungs, that sound might be able to reach three or more sensors, but it’s not an impulsive sound. And so, our system is only triggered when three or more sensors detect a loud, impulsive sound, like a bang, a boom, or a pop. And then the system goes through a process of locating where that sound originated from to your question, we are quite precise. Our system locates to a precise latitude and longitude. To account for things like, the diffraction around buildings, we set our margin of error at 25 meters. So, for frame of reference, that’s about how far an adult can throw a baseball. So, if you stood in the middle of a circle and threw a baseball, in that circle is where we guarantee, the gunfire has originated from.
[00:12:52] And we do give guarantees to our customers. Our guarantee is 90%. No system that operates in the dynamic real world, as ours does, could ever be 100%, but we do set a high standard. We carefully track metrics. We report those to our customers. We report them to all of our customers, and we give them a financial incentive to provide us feedback.
[00:13:15] If we make mistakes and don’t meet the 90 percent threshold, guarantee that we give them. They pay us less. And so, they’re encouraged to provide us feedback. Let us know when we make mistakes so we can use that information to make the performance of the system better and measuring that performance across all of our customers over many years.
[00:13:35] We know that we keep an accuracy rate of about 97 percent, and so that’s pretty good. occasionally the system, will miss a shooting that actually occurs. There can be reasons for that. Our system has limitations. It’s only designed to detect outdoor gunfire. So, gunfire that occurred in an enclosure like in a home or a car may not be loud enough to reach our sensors or gunfire that occurred with a silenced firearm, a silencer, might not produce a loud enough report to reach our sensors. But to your question, it’s very accurate and it’s very fast and those things matter and matter, from academic research it pays big dividends for the police. They use the system and the communities that benefit from it.
[00:14:23] Joe Selvaggi: So, I want to unpack all the things you just mentioned. I just want to make a fine point on the precision. You say, you locate it, but you also mentioned there’s all kinds of things you don’t detect or detect but you don’t identify as gunfire. I’ve heard it alleged that things like firework and let’s face it a firecracker is an explosion like a rifle round or a gunshot or slamming car doors or as you say I’m not so much concerned about someone yelling but there’s all kinds of things that sound gun like. Would you consider let’s say a balloon popping or a garage door slamming or a firework going off? If you identify that would be considered an error, right? If you arrived and you saw fireworks, that would be scored as, we thought it was gunfire, it was a noise, but it wasn’t a gun. Would that be a mistake, or would that just be par for the course?
[00:15:14] Tom Chittum: So, let me clarify how that works. If we published it to the police and said, this was gunfire, but it was not. That would be a mistake. That our system detects it is not a mistake. Our system detects loud, impulsive sounds. But then we go through a process of filtering. So, I mentioned the spatial filtering.
[00:15:33] The point of that is just that the sense system covers a wide area. And so only, impulsive sounds of a sufficiently loud character will trigger the system to even detect and locate where it occurred. Once it does that, we use a patented process for filtering out sounds that are not characteristic of gunfire. Again, that patent is right there on our, website. It’s a public record. Anyone who wants to look at how we’re doing this, The system is very good at filtering out sounds that are not likely gunfire, but everything that has characteristics of gunfire then goes through a human review process where they do additional filtering to remove sounds that are not gunfire, and only after those trained reviewers determine that the sound is, in fact, gunfire, does it get published.
[00:16:26] And so there’s a number of levels of review. And there’s a big misunderstanding about what it is that our reviewers and our system is doing. Some people think that they only use their ears, that they just listen to a sound and try and guess whether it’s a firework or a firearm, but that’s not it. they also use their ears. They’re listening for clues. That it might be gunfire. Things like the cadence of gunfire, consistent, steady, strengths of the pulses that don’t overlap. They’re also using their ears to listen for audio clues that it is not gunfire. The whistling, sizzling. The popping of firecrackers, the inconsistent pulse strength, or overlapping pulses from a lot of firecrackers being lit.
[00:17:11] But they’re also looking at things like situational factors. If it’s 3 a.m. in a residential area, it’s not likely road construction. They are looking at sensor participation. Because our sensors are spread out over an area, we can determine the shape of the fire. of the propagation of the sound. And sound propagates omnidirectional, which is just a fancy way of saying it spreads out in all directions at the same speed. Think of it like a bubble expanding. But the way gunfire is made tends to be very directional. And so, our reviewers will assess the shape of the sensor participation. Is it linear, conical, versus encircling the sound? They’ll also look for things like distance to the nearest sensor. It reports that sort of information too. The sound of gunfire will travel further. And there are a number of other factors that they’re looking at too, so when people are told it just hears loud sounds and publishes them, that’s just evidence that either they want to mislead someone about how our system works or they simply don’t understand it.
[00:18:15] Joe Selvaggi: So, these, trained listeners, who could have many ways to analyze the sound, that you just outlined, are they your employees or are they people you train, for the benefit of the city so they can use your technology better?
[00:18:26] Tom Chittum: They are our employees. So, we maintain an incident review center. It is operational 24 -7, 365, and has been for more than 12 years, and they review every alert before it gets published for our customers. Because we are controlling those processes, we can maintain very strict metrics on their performance and keep a high and consistent standard across all of our customers.
[00:18:55] Joe Selvaggi: Maybe this is a sort of a too deep question or too leading of a question, but how does the accuracy translate into identifying gun related crime? Meaning, do you measure your accuracy against just gunshots, which I can’t imagine good benevolent reasons for gunshots going off in the middle of the city. But how well does that translate into gun related crime? Meaning, you don’t know whether the gun is being shot for fun or, bank robbery. How, how does that translate into, law enforcement, police? The effectiveness of the cops catching actual criminals doing crimes?
[00:19:32] Tom Chittum: Well, that’s a great question, Joe. So, when we publish an alert of gunfire, for us, it goes into the ether. We don’t know if it is celebratory gunfire or homicidal gunfire.
[00:19:49] I like to tell people that we can alert police to the what, the when, and the where of gunfire, but not the who. That requires them to respond and investigate. They provide us, feedback when the incident involved an officer, and so we have records of those. But most of the time, we don’t know what was on the other side, and so it really is up to the police to track those metrics, how often are they recovering evidence? How often are they locating gunshot wound victims? How often are they making arrests? There are a number of different metrics. They’re not all created equal. And what we see is there are a lot of factors that influence those rates too. What are the best practices that the department employs?
[00:20:34] How quickly are they responding? How much time are they spending on the scene when they get there? And so, from our perspective, that 97 percent really does depend on our customers letting us know when we make mistakes. It happens sometimes, not much. Occasionally, a shooting will occur and for whatever reason, our system won’t detect it. And our customers will say, hey, we have this gunshot wound victim. You missed it. What happened? And we’ll look at it and try and assess why that happened and that’s how our system performs. But again, measuring across 170 ish customers over many years and literally millions of incidents, we know that we keep a very high accuracy rate, in the high 90s.
[00:21:22] Joe Selvaggi: Well, that’s great. And the answer to your question brought to me one of the questions I wanted to ask perhaps earlier, but I noted at the top of the show that your title is Senior Vice President of Forensics. And some of your answers suggest forensic analysis, looking at what happened, taking apart the sounds and saying what really went on here. Does your title as Senior Vice President of Forensics suggest your expertise is used in a court of law, either for criminal or civil trials?
[00:21:48] Tom Chittum: Yeah. So, I am an attorney. I’m a licensed attorney. I have been for many years, but I didn’t always work as an attorney. Before I came to work for Sound Thinking, what was Shot Spotter when I joined it, I actually worked for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Farms, Explosives, the ATF. I was an ATF agent for almost all of my adult life. I started out as a plain old agent in the streets working cases, but I worked my way up to the top. Through the ranks and when I retired in 22, I was the deputy director of the agency. I was the chief operating officer and that gave me a lot of opportunity to travel across the country talking to law enforcement leaders, elected officials, the public, the media.
[00:22:30] About how law enforcement can use the tools, the tactics, the technology of crime gun intelligence to do a better job of investigating gun crime. Because of that, I knew about Shot Spotter. At the time, though, it wasn’t so obvious to me the role it would play in the courtroom. Prior to coming to this company, I had only read one book. Court case about Shot Spotter. It involved the attempted murder of an ATF agent in Chicago. This agent was shot in the head. He survived. I believe he is indestructible. But Shot Spotter evidence was used in his trial to convict the gang member that shot him. Now that I’m here, though, I realize that Shot Spotter very often ends up in court.
[00:23:16] And so to your question, my role here is helping make sure that the evidence that our system produces is used effectively in court. And I make that point, without specifying prosecution or defense. Occasionally people We’ll assume that because we have contractual relationships largely with police agencies, we have some sort of pro law enforcement, pro prosecution bias, but that’s just not true. Our evidence is our evidence, and it is sometimes used by defense effectively in court too. That’s up to the attorneys to argue about what the evidence means. It’s our place just to say what the evidence is. And so, I oversee a team of professionals who appear in court and testify about what Shot Spotter detected. They’ve testified in over 300 cases in 24 states, and despite what some would lead you to believe, courts overwhelmingly acknowledge shot spotter as an appropriate and a unique factor in assessing things like reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, and they’ll also admit Shot Spotter evidence for its scientific value as well.
[00:24:31] Joe Selvaggi: So, let’s test your, bona fides as an honest broker here. If you, we’ve been talking about all the virtues of the technology, where might it be vulnerable to misuse? if it’s capabilities, but also its limitations and you testify on behalf of both, what would you say would, what are the limits? What can’t it do? What, where are its blind spots, if you will, or deaf spots, I suppose would be a better analogy. What, share with our listeners where it might be vulnerable.
[00:24:58] Tom Chittum: Well, so, I mentioned before that we can tell you the what, the when, and the where, not the who. Sometimes we can tell you the how, and I can give you an example of that. So, once we alert police to a shooting incident, it is really up to them to decide what to do. To use it effectively, one of the criticisms that sometimes people will make is that somehow Shot Spotter violates civil rights, and they’re often talking about this idea of stop and frisk policing. Shot Spotter says gunfire occurred here.
[00:25:32] Then it’s up to the police to go there and investigate. And when they do, they have to develop their independent, reasonable suspicion of criminal activity if they’re going to detain someone. This is America. You are free to go about your business without interference from police. But the Supreme Court has said that if police have reasonable suspicion to believe that you’re engaged in criminal activity, they can temporarily detain you while they investigate.
[00:25:57] If they have a reasonable suspicion to believe that you’re armed, they can conduct a pat down. for a weapon. and if that happens, and if police make an arrest, then as every criminal defendant in America does, that person has a right to challenge that evidence. on the stand. Shot Spotter’s role in that is limited we can say that gunfire occurred here at this time, but after that it’s up to the police. And so, I would say that those are the limitations of the system. We can’t tell you what the person who shot the gun was wearing, or driving, or where they went after the shooting, unless they shoot again. And very often we do detect multiple shooting incidents that are related. So those are the limitations of the technology. I don’t think, though, that’s a surprise. If you look at how law enforcement does its job, there’s no single tool that it can rely on. There are lots of tools in the toolbox. Ours is simply one, and that’s what it does.
[00:26:57] Joe Selvaggi: So, I want to go deeper again and press you a little harder there, because they say, okay, I appreciate that we don’t lose our rights merely because a shot was heard near us, right? We’re, our rights are not diminished by a Shot Shotter, in theory. But let’s imagine a policeman hears, or your technology tells the police that it has heard a shot being fired in a particular location. The police arrive. They know something bad, a shot was fired. So, you’ve got all kinds of people in every direction. They know a gun has gone off. So, immediately, their level of suspicion is higher, and also, it’s not just, they’re not spitting on the sidewalk, they’re firing guns, so they know somebody there is armed. Doesn’t that turn everybody’s spidey sense up to 11 and say, okay, everybody here is guilty until I determine they’re innocent. Isn’t this sort of inviting police to arrive, assume guilt broadly, and assume deadly force, potentially, there? It, to me, yes, of course their legal rights are not diminished, but the suspicion level is automatically higher given that you happen to be, let’s say, in the wrong place at the wrong time when a gun went off. What would you say to that? I know it’s a big question, but I’m sure our listeners are thinking it.
[00:28:06] Tom Chittum: Yeah, well, I think it’s a fair question. so, for one, I think it takes a little bit of a cynical view of law enforcement. I have been around policing my entire adult life. And what I have found is that most police are genuinely good people. Some of them are absolute heroes, but most of them just want to do a good job. They know that their work will be scrutinized in court. I think that the level of training that they get matters. but if you’ll look at the cases where Shot Spotter has been used, you’ll see that there is lots of information that police can rely on.
[00:28:42] First, let’s start with the alert itself. When we send an alert to our customers, we send audio with it. They can listen to the gunfire for themselves, and then we tell them a precise location. We’ll also include helpful tactical intelligence, like if an incident involved fully automatic gunfire or a large number of rounds being fired, so that they can prepare for that.
[00:29:07] Appropriately. Now, contrast a Shot Spotter alert to what happens with a 911 call, and I think it’s important to point out that, very often, no 911 calls come in at all. That’s one of the big gaps that Shot Spotter helps fill. But if a 911 call comes in, very often that caller has limited information. They say, I heard what I think was gunfire. It happened what I think sounded like out front. They can’t say if it’s on that block, or two blocks over, or three blocks over, the sound of gunfire will travel a long distance. So, in those situations, when, police only have a 911 call without specific details, they have no choice but to swarm the area, rove around, and see if they see something that looks suspicious.
[00:29:51] A Shot Spotter, however, gives them a precise location to start from. Now once they get there, their investigation must start, and sometimes it’s as simple as making contact with you, with people that you encounter, and say, hey, we got a report of gunfire. Did you see anything? Did you hear anything? very often, witnesses will say, yes, there was shooting, the person was wearing this or that. And so the limitation of the technology is only that we’re detecting the sound, we’re deploying them there, but what police do after that It’s up to the police, and I think, and I’ve said this many times, I don’t know that there’s been a more difficult time to be a cop, than it is today, right? The public expects the police to be faster, fairer, more transparent, more effective than ever before. But I actually don’t have a problem with that. I don’t think that the public should ever be able to hold law enforcement to a standard higher than it should hold to today itself too. And what I think we see is that a lot of police agencies are effectively using it. They’re honest brokers. They’re following the constitutional obligations that they have, and they’re only making stops when they can articulate the reasonable suspicion that Supreme Court says they must have.
[00:31:05] Joe Selvaggi: Yes, no one envies the role of a policeman, particularly in these days, this day and age. As you say, now that we have cameras and close scrutiny, police must be on their best behavior. All the time. Nevertheless, if we’re talking about, a case where suddenly, cops arrive and, let’s say they, they’ve been told by you that a shot was fired, And there’s no evidence we, they can’t figure out what happened and they do start, catching people and someone runs away and accidentally is shot, they maybe were, I don’t know, a low level drug, deal or something and they run and the police make the assumption that, that was the shooter and perhaps used deadly force on this person. How can you, deal with the, let’s say, either the political repercussions or the PR repercussions? At some level, the police wouldn’t have been there but for a shot spot or, and something bad happened. How do you inoculate yourself from what, it seems to me, inevitable that these kinds of occasions will happen? You don’t have to point to any particular case or any particular city where this may have happened, but what do you do in that situation?
[00:32:06] Tom Chittum: Well, look, I think it is awful when, police make mistakes that result in a wrongful death. As you point out, police have a lot of contact with a lot of people, and thankfully, the number of unjustifiable shootings is really low. To suggest that police wouldn’t have been there but for shot spotter, I think minimizes all of the other times where the police response was lifesaving, helped hold somebody accountable, helped get justice for a crime gun victim. Occasionally our critics will point to a couple of outlier incidents.
[00:32:42] There is one specific one, really only one in Chicago involving a young man. named Adam Toledo. Terrible circumstances. He was only 13 years old. but Shot Spotter did what Shot Spotter is supposed to do. It detected gunfire. Adam Toledo and the person he was with, were shooting in the middle of the night in, this area of Chicago and police responded.
[00:33:05] But once they got there, the shooting that occurred was really not something that Shot Spotter, was responsible for. And I would ask the question, do you think police should not respond when someone is shooting? the outlier example like that, though, really is that. And it does not minimize the hundreds of times that ShotSpotter locates gunshot wound victims, allows police to render aid, allows them to make arrests of actual shootings.
[00:33:33] In fact, you see it in Boston. If you look at headlines all across America about Shot Spotter, and you can remove the ones that are only opinion based, what you are left with is example after example of police responding to a shot spotter alert and finding gunshot wound victims, arresting offenders. And it’s because the technology really works. We are not simply getting lucky all of those times. We are alerting police to gunfire. And when shootings occur in urban areas, Timely response is important. Occasionally, the police are going to make mistakes, and that’s awful, and we should hold them to a high account. But that is not something that is Shot Spotter’s fault. Police should be investigating shooting incidents.
[00:34:18] Joe Selvaggi: Now, I’ve tried to, test you on all the sort of aspects or the sort of common criticisms of your technology, but I do want to acknowledge that there, again, I learned about this in my research, that there are, lawsuits or, made by, let’s say, the ACLU about, the general gist of their arguments is that, civil liberties are being violated. People are being over policed, or they’re being assumed to be guilty unnecessarily by virtue of the fact that they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether the shop herd was a valid one or not. Even if we assert that it was valid, it doesn’t make the people in the neighborhood any more suspicious than otherwise. I want to leave an open-ended question. Points do lawsuits like those from the ACLU make that I haven’t yet addressed? Where do they see weakness in your technology that I haven’t, tested you on? Well, in some ways,
[00:35:06] Tom Chittum: I think their argument is really a proxy argument. It’s not really Shot Spotter that they’re opposed to. It’s policing that they’re opposed to, and Shot Spotter is a convenient proxy for that. I think their complaint is about what some people will refer to as stop and frisk policing. And I understand that. Stop and frisk policing means that police see someone, they stop them, they pat them down for a weapon. As we talked about earlier, the Supreme Court has said, when police have reasonable suspicion to believe that a person is engaged in criminal activity, they can stop temporarily detain someone, and they can pat them down if they have reasonable suspicion to believe they have a weapon. The problem is when they stop and pat down people when they do not have reasonable suspicion that person is carrying a firearm and that would be unconstitutional in and of itself. They, I think sometimes, accuse ShotSpotter of blanketing areas with reasonable suspicion, but that simply isn’t how our technology works. Our technology locates to a precise latitude and longitude. And what the courts have said is when police show up, there are a lot of other factors that they should be assessing close spatial and temporal proximity is one. How quickly do police get there? How close is the person that they observed to where the shot spot or alert was? But there are a lot of other factors too. If a person is standing alone in that area, it’s different than if they’re being plucked from a crowd witness statement may corroborate what has happened there. And so, police have this challenging task of assessing Reasonable suspicion in stopping someone. You mentioned earlier a person that engages in unprovoked flight. They see the police, they turn, and run is one factor that police may assess.
[00:36:51] And frankly, I think police do a good job generally. the challenge with stop and frisk policing in theory, police, one, want to catch people that are illegally carrying firearms, and two, they want to, create this perception that carrying an illegal firearm is risky because police may stop you and pat you down. The downside to painting with such a broad brush is the effect it has on public support for policing. And I think that’s an important point to emphasize. The trust in law enforcement is absolutely crucial. You pointed out that gunfire is not spread evenly across our cities. It’s pretty localized.
[00:37:36] And very often people in that area know who’s responsible for the shootings, but if they don’t have faith in the police, if they don’t feel that what will happen when they call police will be just, then they won’t call, then they won’t cooperate, and I think Shot Spotter actually can help improve that too. So when shootings occur and police respond timely, it can reassure the community that police care. So, I don’t think we dug into it, but we know from research that 80 percent or more of gunfire in urban areas goes unreported to police through 911. Some of the reasons why are just practical. Many shootings happen in the middle of the night and law-abiding citizens are asleep. They may be awakened, but they don’t know exactly what it was they heard, and so they don’t call. But sometimes there are heartbreaking reasons. Some people have grown numb to the sound of gunfire and have just resigned themselves to living with it, or they think police don’t care and wouldn’t come anyways.
[00:38:36] But even though we know 4 out of 5 shootings go unreported, the average citizen doesn’t know that. And so, they hear gunfire, they look out their window, and they don’t see police show up. They think police know, but they don’t know, so they don’t come, and people lose faith. And ShotSpotter helps fill that gap and brings police there when shootings occur. And even when there is no gunshot wound victim located, and even when there’s no offender, arrested, there’s still value in having contact with the community. Knocking on doors, saying, hey, we got a report of gunfire. Just want to make sure everyone’s okay. Did you see anything? Did you hear anything? And I think low friction contacts like that can help reassure the majority of the people that live in those communities who are law abiding and who do want to see police response, that police do actually care about them.
[00:39:23] Joe Selvaggi: Yes, it’s curious to me that an organization like the ACLU that seems, its abiding concern is civil liberties, that they seem to ignore the civil liberties of the victims of crimes, right? Like, of course, we’re, I haven’t really pegged you for, pinned you down on the fact that these censors are primarily located in marginalized communities. Of course, as you say, it’s because that’s where crime happens. But of course, the people in the marginalized communities are also, are marginalized. They’re the victims of the crime that the wealthy are not being shot at. It’s often the most vulnerable. It seems odd that we are more concerned about the rights of potential criminals, and their obvious victims. I think there’s something like 20,000 murders in 2020, with guns, that’s a lot of people, so, what would you say, though, to critics that say, well, this invites over policing, now, where these signals would not have been picked up, now they are picked up, and now the police are everywhere, and people in those communities, unfortunately, you’ve got to do something about it gunshots, but they’re going to be, shaken down and brought in on, on other charges, meaning everybody in these communities is going to get locked up because someone fired a gun. What would you say to, so people who are, reflexively, concerned about, quote unquote, over policing in these communities?
[00:40:33] Tom Chittum: Well, there’s a couple of things that you mentioned there. For one, I am baffled. I really have been baffled by some of the opposition. As you mentioned, it seems that they are far more concerned about people being arrested than they are people being killed, and I just don’t understand that mindset. I also think that this perception of over-policing is largely overblown. But, to your point about gunfire not being spread everywhere, I wish that Shot Spotter was deployed all across America. If you cannot deploy it everywhere though, of course you will deploy it in the place where it can do the greatest good. And you talk about the impact in certain marginalized communities. I think an analogy is helpful. it’s well documented that Fire related deaths, not firearm, fire related deaths also occur in underprivileged, marginalized communities. And that’s because there has been disinvestment in public safety infrastructure in places like that.
[00:41:35] Shot Spotter is public safety infrastructure. The fact that it is deployed in the places where communities see the greatest gunfire, I think, is something that should be celebrated. It’s an investment in infrastructure that can help save lives. And there’s another point to make, when police respond, at a base level, Shot Spotter is just a basis for them to start an investigation. I mentioned that some of them are the rudimentary investigations. That a patrol officer would conduct. They show up to an area, they make contact with people they find, and say, hey, we got a report of gunfire. Did you see anything? Did you hear anything? but what we know from research is if police contribute, adequate follow up investigative resources to shooting incidents, they can increase their clearance rate. Now it makes sense that as a country we focus on homicide, right? That’s our worst crime and so we expect police to put the most effort into solving those. But what research shows is if they also put that sort of effort into non-fatal shootings, they can increase their clearance rate for that type of shooting, too. Non-fatal shootings are often just a failed homicide. And if you arrest and hold those offenders accountable, you prevent other shootings that they would commit. And we know that a very small number of people are responsible for most shootings. And one final point I would make. The failure to address Violent crime, in the communities where it happens most often, is, in my opinion, itself a root cause of crime.
[00:43:13] When criminals who commit violent crime feel emboldened and think they won’t be held accountable, they will commit more. And when people in those communities feel despair and don’t cooperate because they think it’s hopeless, the rate of crime increases. The quality of their life decreases. And so, I think adequately staffing, training, and supporting law enforcement, giving them tools like Shot Spotter, but other tools like ballistic imaging, focusing on improving critical tools like community support really can do a lot to reduce the crime that occurs in the communities where it happens most often. I like sitting on my front porch. I think everyone in America should feel safe sitting on theirs.
[00:44:00] Joe Selvaggi: Yes, indeed. I couldn’t agree more. I say, I don’t know how well you know Boston. I live in a neighborhood called Beacon Hill. I am certain if there was a gunshot in Beacon Hill, the Army, Navy, and Air Force Marines would be on top of it.
[00:44:09] And they would take it very seriously and they’d find the guy. That we tolerate gunshots in other communities, marginalized communities, is beyond comprehension for me. We should have zero tolerance and use any tool in our toolkit to identify. And as you mentioned, again, we maybe hit this idea too hard. Crime isn’t widespread and evenly distributed through all cities and all communities and all neighborhoods. It’s very narrowly, committed by a very few number of very determined criminals. It’s not, we’re not just finding criminals where we look. They happen to be in a particular area and you’re, and you’re looking in the right spot, now, you probably, we’re getting to the end of the time together. You hinted at the future, but I want to ask you, beyond, of course, you, you are a member of a company that you, you want to, grow your business. and so, I say you have, an incentive to want to have, Shot Spotter, everywhere.
[00:44:59] That said, let’s assume it’s not efficient, it’s not feasible. What do you see in the future of Shot Spotter or the technology like it? Do you think, again, you suggest that success begets success and failure begets failure. If we don’t catch criminals, they commit more crimes and become more emboldened. The flip side is if we lock people with guns, we all become safer and it’s a virtuous circle. What do you see the future of Shot Spotter and the future of being able to combat violent crime in the United States?
[00:45:24] Tom Chittum: So, I have three things to say. The third one will be the answer to your question. As to your previous comments, I don’t live in Boston, but I did visit recently to appear on a news program. And while I was there, I walked up to Beacon Hill. And bought a book at a bookstore. It seemed like a very safe community to me. You talked about crime not being spread everywhere, but I think it’s also important to emphasize another fact.
[00:45:51] Even though it’s concentrated in certain communities, those communities are not criminal. There are a lot of law-abiding people in those communities who want safe communities to live in. It’s a small number of people in a small number of places. And so, police really need to focus on those people in those places. That’s precision policing, and it’s something that Shot Spotter lends itself well to. You asked about the future of the company. So, as an attorney and in my role here, overseeing forensic services, every morning I get an alert about cases, case law that has mentioned Shot Spotter. This says something about me, how excited I am to read those every morning, but for months and months when I do get alerts.
[00:46:39] It’s cases that mention Shot Spotter, one time. Shots, police responded to a Shot Spotter alert, and then the case is about something entirely different. Sometimes these cases. I’ve mentioned Shot Spotter twice when there’s a footnote that says Shot Spotter is an acoustic gunshot detection system. My point for saying that is I believe that Shot Spotter is becoming routine evidence in criminal prosecutions. And I think that is a good thing. Much like the other technology, that can help make communities safer, like cameras, like ballistic imaging. what may seem newfangled really isn’t. It is, of course, important that we have appropriate policies and oversight. I also think it’s important to bring transparency to what law enforcement are doing.
[00:47:26] I don’t believe in secret policing. It’s part of the reason that we as a company very often appear in public on programs like this. To talk about what it is we do because we want the public to be informed, but I think they should be informed honestly. And when they do, I think that they will see that this is not controversial technology at all.
[00:47:45] It’s absolutely essential. It’s one tool and toolbox that can help make law enforcement more effective, can create safer communities, can hold offenders accountable, and, and can save lives. And let me conclude by mentioning that. Too often, our critics are focused on arrests, and while it is true that Shot Spotter alerts often do lead to arrests for gun related crimes, that’s not the system’s highest use. When gunfire occurs, very often there are gunshot wound victims left behind, and when you are shot, time is of the essence, and Shot Spotter gives police and first responders a precise location to get to. And we know from the experience of many of our customers that very often, Shot Spotter is the only thing that alerts them to a shooting that caused a wound.
[00:48:37] For instance, in a single year in Oakland, California, Shot Spotter led to a hundred gunshot wound victims where there was no corresponding 911 call. Those are people who would not get aid. But for the shot spotter alert. Now many of those gunshot wounds are not life threatening, and they will not die, but some of them are. And in fact, there was very recently a case like that in the Boston area, a man was shot in Dorchester, Shot Spotter alerted police, they responded. They rendered aid to him. He had life threatening injuries. The subsequent investigation allowed them to make an arrest related to that shooting. And I think that, at the end of the day, is exactly what Shot Spotter is there to do. To help police be effective, to save lives, to hold people accountable.
[00:49:22] Joe Selvaggi: Indeed. I’ll leave it there. Again, I think all of our listeners imagine a future where gun related crime is no more, this seems to be a scientific, objective, reasonable, tool to get us there, and is, that some Americans can’t walk their streets and feel safe is a tragedy and I think your technology will help Boston and other residents of cities around the country and around the globe to feel a little bit better and a little safer. Thank you very much, Tom, for joining me on Hubwonk today. You’ve been a fund of information and really, I think, have helped dispel a lot of the myths that are starting to float around, around this, what I consider really promising technology. Thank you for joining me.
Tom Chittum: Thanks for having me, Joe. I really appreciate it.
Joe Selvaggi: This has been another episode of Hubwonk. If you enjoyed today’s show, there are several ways to support Hubwonk and Pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us if you subscribed to Hubwonk on your iTunes Podcatcher. It would make it easier for others to find Hubwonk if you offer a five star rating or a favorable review. Of course, we’re grateful if you share Hubwonk with friends. If you have ideas or comments or suggestions for me about future episode topics, you’re certainly welcome to email me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute. org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
Joe Selvaggi talks with SoundThinking’s Senior Vice President Tom Chittum about gunfire location technology promises and pitfalls when deployed by law enforcement in high-crime communities.
Guest:
Tom Chittum is a lawyer, leader, and public safety executive dedicated to enhancing justice and safety in America. He is a licensed attorney and Senior Vice President at SoundThinking, a public safety technology company, where he leads a team using data and forensic tools to combat gun crime. A retired federal agent and former Associate Deputy Director of the ATF, Chittum has over 27 years of experience in law enforcement, he has conducted and overseen thousands of investigations and frequently testified as an expert witness. An adjunct professor at UNLV’s Boyd School of Law, he teaches “Firearms Law & the Second Amendment” and regularly speaks on crime and policing. Chittum holds degrees from Marshall University, Eastern Kentucky University, and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. He is licensed to practice law in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
Study Finds Supply Shortage at the Heart of Greater Boston Housing Crisis
/in Economic Opportunity, Featured, Housing, Housing, News, Press Releases, Press Releases: Economic Opportunity /by Editorial StaffConstruction costs, land use regulation and zoning among the reasons why housing development lags growth in jobs, number of households
BOSTON – A new Pioneer Institute study recommends that municipal leaders employ strategies like density bonuses and expedited permitting to prioritize the construction of family-oriented housing in urban areas to combat high prices and supply shortages resulting from decades of insufficient housing development.
“Across the country, housing production has been low since the 2008 financial crisis,” said Andrew Mikula, author of “Supply Stagnation: The Root Cause of Greater Boston’s Housing Crisis and How to Fix It.” “The housing crisis is especially acute in Boston because supply in the region never bounced back from the 1991 recession.”
As of last November, the median down payment on a house in Greater Boston was $105,300 – more than the region’s annual median income. The cost of building a typical “starter home” in Massachusetts is 22 percent above the national average – the second highest in the nation.
As of June 2023, the average monthly rent in the City of Boston topped $3,000.
High housing costs are one of the primary reasons that residents are leaving in droves, fleeing to more affordable locations. Those between 26 and 35 years old, who are just forming families, are the most likely to leave.
From 2010 to 2020, the number of households in Greater Boston increased by 10.7 percent while the number of housing units only rose 7.9 percent. Not surprisingly, the region’s vacancy rate is consistently well below the national average.
Among the reasons why this trend is likely to continue is Baby Boomers’ desire to “age in place” rather than move in with family members or move to group settings.
From 2002 to 2022, Greater Boston added 3.3 jobs for every housing permit that was granted. The recommended range is from 0.75 to 1.5 jobs for every permit. Nationally, the number of homes that were permitted but haven’t begun construction has reached a 39-year high.
There are a number of reasons why housing production is down across the U.S. and in the Boston area. Nationally, the cost of construction materials was 43 percent higher at the start of this year than in January 2020. A construction labor shortage also places upward pressure on costs. At $333,200 in 2023, the cost of an acre of land in Massachusetts is second only to Rhode Island.
Land use regulations and zoning also contribute to low production and high costs. Despite high population density in Massachusetts, lot sizes are larger than average. Some Boston suburbs require owners to have an acre or more of contiguous land to build a house.
Rules like parking requirements for new developments can be out of step with residents’ needs. Most Brookline zoning districts require two off-street parking spaces for each residential unit, even though only 24 percent of town residents have access to two or more vehicles.
Politically, housing development is difficult because the loudest voices in the debate tend to be existing homeowners who want to protect their property values and officials concerned with rising school budgets. Despite popular belief, numerous studies demonstrate that new construction doesn’t measurably impact surrounding property values and that multi-family homes in particular tend to be fiscally positive. In addition, declining enrollments in many Boston suburbs should reduce concerns about school overcrowding.
Proposed solutions that don’t address the underlying supply issue are unlikely to help advance housing availability and affordability. The best known such policy is rent control. One study found that San Francisco landlords subject to rent control reduced their rental housing stock by 15 percent.
In addition to advocating for density bonuses and expedited permitting, Mikula’s recommendations include diversifying suburban housing by rezoning to accommodate more townhouses, multi-family housing and rentals for young families.
Mikula also cites Federal Housing Choice Vouchers (formerly known as “Section 8 vouchers”) as an effective tool.
Andrew Mikula is a Housing Fellow at Pioneer Institute. Beyond housing, Andrew’s research areas of interest include urban planning, economic development, and regulatory reform. He holds a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Kimberly Steadman of Edward Brooke on Boston’s Charter School Sector
/in Education, Featured, Learning Curve, News, Podcast /by Editorial StaffRead a transcript
[00:00:00] Albert Cheng: Hello everybody. I hope you’re doing well wherever you’re tuning in from. I am Albert Cheng, your co-host this week. for another episode of the Learning Curve podcast. And co-hosting with me this week is Steven Wilson. Steven, it’s great to have you on the show with us. Albert, it’s wonderful to be here. Why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to the listeners. I know we’ve connected in the past, but not everyone listening has,
[00:00:25] Steven Wilson: Yes. I’m particularly excited to be joining you because Pioneer is very dear to me. I was there many moons ago. In fact, when we were working to all so much for joining us today, and we hope to see you again in the future. And academic education and how despite its aims, this will leave already marginalized students more excluded and less empowered and more unequal. So, I’m stepping right into some controversy as you can see.
[00:01:07] Albert Cheng: Ah, we don’t shy away from that here. And maybe let me up the ante a little bit and move on to our news. I guess what I wanted to highlight for a new story this week, it’s an opinion piece in the New York Times that showed up a couple days ago, and it’s entitled, Higher Education Must Reinvigorate the Liberal Hearts. And the authors of this piece started by observing a lot of the Protesting and the civil unrest or lack of civil discourse really on higher education campuses these days.
[00:01:40] And, they’re making an argument that 1 of the reasons for this is the higher education has shied away from the liberal arts. And there’s a view out there that. Reading some of these classic texts or these great texts, it’s a narrow minded because its only texts written by dead white European males and that sort of argument. But what these folks are arguing is that actually these texts tell us a lot about the human condition and human experience. And, without wrestling with the kinds of questions that generations of folks have. Wrestled with, we miss out on something important. We miss out a lot on understanding ourselves, miss out on critical thinking, miss out on having our own views challenged, and there’s a lot to gain from engaging in these classic texts, these great books, so to speak. And so we can pull up that article and point our listeners to that. But anyway, I you have thoughts about that, or, you had a new story as well that you wanted to talk about.
[00:02:35] Steven Wilson: Yeah, I just want to say, I’m so glad you picked up on that piece, Albert. It’s really important, and commitment to the liberal arts on campus is waning, and I think with very dangerous results. I think one thing that doesn’t get mentioned in the piece, or generally, is that being told what to think is really boring. And so, when you go into classes, including K 12, where you only see one point of view and there isn’t that kind of wonderful invigorating sparring with ideas that you’re describing, is that what is that children are bored and sullen and even angry.
[00:03:09] So we do need to fix that. And I’m really glad you raised that piece. So, my eye, this went to an opinion piece. This Week in the Hill by Tanya Tetlow, who is the president of Fordham University in New York. And she really vividly describes what she calls the, quote, slow moving disaster in K 12 following the pandemic. The, quote, untold injury on the achievement of young people. And she thinks this cannot be addressed. She’s been working with students just on campus, whether at her college or elsewhere, when students arrive. She cites the collapse of NAEP scores since 2019, of course, especially in math, and maybe most alarmingly, the widening of the achievement gaps.
[00:03:53] So what she’s calling for is exciting. She wants a national tutoring corps, what she calls a small army of tutors that would help students recover from pandemic learning loss. And here’s how it would work. Young college graduates would be rewarded for their service with college loan forgiveness. But instead of it being given away, as under President Biden, it would be earned from participating. And she’s quick to cite the success of so-called high dosage tutoring. So, it’s a really interesting and important proposal, and I hope one that is taken seriously. But I would just touch very briefly on some important obstacles. She cites the work of Harvard economist, Roland Fryer, his research on high dosage tutoring, but when we say high dosage, we mean it five days a week, 50 minutes each in small groups of six students.
[00:04:44] This, as Mike Goldstein of MATCH, who I consider the great expert on high dosage tutoring, will tell you is incredibly difficult to implement. And then the last thing I have to say, it’s not at all clear that there would be an appetite among young people for this effort. Their enthusiasm is for vanquishing racism and not fixing institutions or building new ones. So, I just would question whether we could ever attract the kind of numbers that we’re talking about. TFA, at its peak 10 years ago, was three times its current size. We have 2,000 core members a year, and her proposal would require A million or more, but still, it’s an important idea. I recommend the piece to everybody.
[00:05:27] Albert Cheng: Yeah, no, I think you’re absolutely right to point out the excellent research we have really on tutoring and what that can do. And I know, with some of the work you’ve been involved with in some of these high performing charters, that’s really a hallmark of the approach. You’re right to highlight some of the challenges we face. I hope we can surmount them and given our current moments with learning loss or lackluster academic growth. I hope that we’ve been observing. I’m all for any ideas and let’s try them out and see if we can build something and make some lives better.
[00:05:58] Steven Wilson: Absolutely. I just think that instead of adding a band aid, we should fix what’s broken, which is K-12, we pay for education four times, we pay for K-12, and then we add pre–K in front of that to try to fix it, and we add remedial courses in college after that. And then employers pay again to fix the skills gaps of their new employees.
[00:06:21] I would just hope that we would turn instead to finally fix a K 12. And that’s why I’m so excited about our guest today from Brooke, because she is proving that this is possible every day, but not to steal the thunder from you.
[00:06:36] Albert Cheng: Or, as Steven said, we’re going to have a Kimberly Stedman joined us after the break, so stick around to hear about her work at Brooke Charter Schools.
[00:07:00] Kimberly Stedman joined Brooke Charter Schools in 2004 as a math teacher and professional development coordinator. Since then, she founded Brooke’s First Elementary School and co led the expansion of Brooke from one campus to five. Ms. Steadman is currently serving as Network Co Director and holds responsibility for all academic aspects of Brooke. Before coming to Brooke, she taught fourth grade in the DC Public Schools and fifth grade in Chelsea Public Schools. Ms. Stedman earned a B. A. at Harvard College, a J. D. from Harvard Law School, and a Master’s in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Kimberly, welcome to the show. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
[00:07:41] Kimberly Steadman: Thanks. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:07:43] Albert Cheng: I did just read your bio, and there’s some information about your background, but I want to give you the opportunity to say a bit more. for 20 years, you’ve been a highly successful teacher, school leader, academic leader, educational entrepreneur, really, with Edward Brooke Charter Schools. Could you just share a little bit more about your background, your formative educational experiences, and really how they’ve informed the work and philosophy at Brooke?
[00:08:06] Kimberly Steadman: Yeah, to start off, I was just really lucky to have received a great education overall myself. I had some amazing elementary teachers and high school teachers who helped foster a deep level of learning.
[00:08:17] And I feel really grateful to have had that and privileged to know that’s not unfortunately an opportunity that everyone in this country has and that is distributed equally across all parts of our country. I want to start with gratitude for the education that I received. When I was in college, I knew that I wanted to do a service oriented career, and so dabbled in a lot of different things, but really just ended up falling in love with a program that I did that was an after school and summer program working in the south end of Boston, in via Victoria and Tent City, and it was working there that I did. Just really became passionate about believing that an excellent public education should be the birthright of every child, that there should be a range of public school options for families to decide which ones are the right ones for their own families. So I joined Teach for America after I graduated.
[00:09:05] I taught in Washington, D.C. public schools. Which when I joined in 1997 was going through a really rough patch and like school started three weeks late that year. my second year, I didn’t get paid until February because their payrolls were so messed up. just a lot of system wide problems there in DCPS.
[00:09:24] And with all of the confidence of a 23-year-old, that bold, naive, I’m going to go fix all these problems by myself. And so, I went to grad school and got my law degree and my master’s in educational policy so I could go write education laws that would fix everything. But the thing is, I missed teaching every moment that I was in grad school. And so I decided to go back into the elementary classroom. all so much for joining us today, and we’ll see you in the next one. Bye. We talk a lot about what our kids were learning and what our obligation was to our students. And so met John Clark at my interview at Brooke and just decided that he was somebody who shared my vision and I wanted to work with.
[00:10:18] So I joined Brooke at that point, and that was 20 years ago at this point. I joined Brooke, which was only in its third year, going into its third year of existence at that point. Just had fifth and sixth grade, so I joined as they were starting seventh grade. And then I’ve been here ever since, got the opportunity to start their first elementary school and then have gotten to work with just amazing people. Children, families, and educators throughout my time here. So I would say it’s like bringing everything that I’ve experienced together but also learning from everyone else all the time that’s informed our work and our philosophy here at Brooke because I’ve learned so much in my two decades here from everyone I’ve worked with.
[00:10:54] Albert Cheng: Thanks for sharing a bit more about that. I want to talk a little bit more just about, your background and how that informs how you operate things right now. There aren’t that many public-school leaders in Massachusetts or anywhere else, really, who’ve got three degrees from Harvard, including a law degree. Could you discuss a bit more about the academic expectations that you face to add an Ivy League and really how that training, whether it’s in law or in education, how does it help you pursue excellence as a leader in the charter school network?
[00:11:24] Kimberly Steadman: It’s hard for me to, separate out how much of it was having gone to Harvard in my Ivy League education, because it’s the only one that I have, it could be that the academic, Expectations are the same as other colleges, but I just don’t know any difference because I only went to one. I would say I got too many degrees from Harvard probably. I should have expanded and gone other places to learn from other institutions. But I loved my undergraduate there. And I got my law degree and education degree at the same time. So, I had to do those together. But I think that in general, being a disciplined thinker matters and being able to confidently learn involving listening to others, reading a lot and trying to just Learn as much as possible is something that I’ve been able to do and hone throughout my education, but I also think that being a disciplined thinker only helps so much because leadership is such a human experience.
[00:12:12] And I think that like my education of the humanities, and everything maybe helped me understand humans better, but I think a lot of it is learning from experience of doing it and leading by watching other people lead too. I would say the big thing that law school helped me do is know when I need to call a real lawyer instead of anything that I actually learned. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. I’m like, this could be a labor situation. Let’s call a labor lawyer instead of me thinking I know everything. My only career is law school.
[00:12:39] Albert Cheng: Let’s get into Brooke Charter Schools and their distinctives and just what’s going on in there. So, you mentioned John Clark. He’s your husband now.
[00:12:46] Kimberly Steadman: Yeah, he wasn’t when I interviewed. That was the first time I met him. Now he is my husband.
[00:12:51] Albert Cheng: Yep. Yep. Just for the record, but anyway, you are both the co-directors now at Woodbrook Charter Schools, and they’re a bit different from other charters that are run by larger education management organizations.
[00:13:02] I think of KIPP, for instance. So, tell listeners about the school’s curricula, the teachers, the culture, and really how you’re able to maintain that focus on high student performance in reading and math.
[00:13:14] Kimberly Steadman: Our teachers and leaders are amazing. I have deep gratitude for what they do every day. John and I are definitely leading the vision, but not solely. We are in a team that is working on this every day. I think that we have really stayed true to focusing on the instructional core. And really caring about that and having that in the forefront of our minds all the time. Our curriculum really values putting thinking on the kids and that’s been true for us all along.
[00:13:42] There are a lot of other schools that have gone in a different approach doing A form of instruction that’s often called the, I do, we do, you do instruction, where the teacher models something, then expects the students to work as a class to do the same thing, and then independently do it. Our approach, we have written out our elements of effective instruction, and it involves a controversial line rejecting I do, we do, you do teaching, and instead trying to flip that model and have our students really engage in the problem solving first. And whether that’s like reading a text on their own and then trying to process it with their teammates before the teacher steps in, or in math, we have something called problem solving tasks where students grapple with a problem that they haven’t seen before and try to figure out based on the logic of math, how they can do that next step and work as a team.
[00:14:34] Class to try to discuss it. So, it’s a very discussion-based students bringing a lot of their own thinking to discuss and teachers guiding and facilitating. They’re definitely a very active participant in it all, but not as the, the one who is standing in front, giving all the knowledge to students, but instead the ones who are ideally master facilitators of student learning during all. Yeah. So, if that’s our view, students need to be very actively engaged. And discussing and doing that deep thinking, then other things flow from that. So, like our culture is about building a culture of achievement in our schools. And so, you need to have a certain culture in order to do that and make all students feel like it’s a safe place for them to take those intellectual risks.
[00:15:16] And so a lot of things we do, I’m sure overlap with all of the other charters. I think it’s just the instructional vision really. is where it’s mostly coming from. And it’s been pretty stable the whole time that we’ve existed. Like, when I joined Brooke, it was John’s vision of, from his own instruction of how he ran math classes, and how, the responsibility for the learning and the belief that all kids can do it, and so having classes that flow from that.
[00:15:41] And then when I started the elementary school, just a different version of that system. Same aligned vision that we have that let us work so well together, which then ended up us getting married eventually. But that was a long time. That was many years and us knowing each other. But that like connection of like it always being about the student learning and the students doing the heavy lifting in every class has been consistent from when I joined Brooke 20 years on now. And it looks different in different places, like for me. A phonics lesson is going to look different than a middle school computer science or a high school chemistry class. We don’t just say, put together any chemicals you want and see what you learn. It’s a very guided learning experience, but it is always students doing the heavy lifting at the focus.
[00:16:22] Albert Cheng: Speaking of students, I want to give you a chance to describe your, the student body and the families that you serve. Book Charter Schools, really, you’re a network of urban schools that, why do you serve core minority students in Boston? Tell us more about the students, the families, and really how you’re able to help deliver the results that you do with these students.
[00:16:40] Kimberly Steadman: Yeah, I would say our students are wonderful, but I think all kids are wonderful. We’re a lottery-based school, and so I would say the students who get in are just a cross section of students in Boston. In Boston, we have school choice for everyone, and so it’s not that There’s a neighborhood school that kids go to, or they opt into charter schools. There aren’t neighborhood schools, so every parent is having to do a school choice mechanism. It doesn’t mean you get your choices all the time. My first choice would be for my own children to go to Brooke, and they have never gotten in. But that was also true of our Boston Public Schools. We ranked which ones.
[00:17:13] We wanted for our students, and we didn’t get any of our ranked choices there either. Sadly, there just aren’t enough quality schools for kids in our city. So, I think our students are great, but I don’t think it’s untrue of other students. Like those kids who don’t get in or don’t apply, I think are also wonderful young people. Our families send their kids to school every day, trusting us with their little ones to keep them safe, do right by them. I feel honored. that they trust us in that way. And like, when we look at what our families want, we know that we are very clear in what we are. We are an extended school day. We have a rigorous curriculum. We are college prep. We. Make commitments to our families when they come here. And I really deeply believe in school choice because I don’t know that every family wants that. Like our school day ends at four. You could have families who don’t want that long a day for their kids.
[00:18:03] And I totally respect that, but it is like us being very clear. If you come to Brooke, this is what we are. And so, letting parents make that kind of decision for themselves of what best matches their families. And then I think how we’re able to deliver outstanding results is. Because we are committed to our core, and we really focus on that core. And I think that involves some discipline thinking about saying no to a lot of things that seem like great things, like community organizations coming in to do a million different activities with kids or something like that’s great. We’re in a research rich city of Boston, but how can we. Instead, provide those options to families if they want to opt for that on their weekend time or anything.
[00:18:44] And we’re very committed to, we’re about academic expectations and academic excellence. And that’s what our focus is on. we have sports and afterschool clubs and all of those things, but we’re very clear that they are always secondary to our academic mission that we have. And we’re not always trying to do the next flashy thing. We’re pretty committed to just keeping our eye on. Our kids learning in our classrooms and how do we know kids are learning and how can we like every day just get a little bit better instead of believing that one thing is going to fix anything or cause drastic improvements that it’s that like day after day, year after year impact.
[00:19:21] And I think because of that, we’ve also been incredibly lucky to have very stable leaders within our schools too, which has been huge for us. A lot of schools have experienced a lot of leadership turnover. And like our first school that we had. John was principal of the middle school from the day it opened, and then I was principal of the elementary school. And then we turned it over when we moved to a network, and that principal that we turned it over to is still there. So, in the 22 years of the school’s existence, the middle school’s had two principals, and the elementary school’s had two principals, me and John, and now Meg Parkett, who’s wonderful. So, it’s that stability of leadership that I think causes families to trust us, too, and know that it’s the same people who they’re committing their kids to or entrusting their kids to every day.
[00:20:04] Steven Wilson: Kimberly, I would just say that this stability in leadership is really extraordinary, and I bet that is significantly due to the vision, Clary, that you and John have about instruction. You’re not as profited as you point out. By educational and ideological trends, because you have stuck by your clarity. I wanted to ask you if I could about expansion. To me, that’s one of the most exciting parts of the story and very significant for school reform nationally, that when you expanded to new campuses in the city. You maintained quality and in some cases actually outperformed the flagship. And that’s true for some other Boston charters that took the invitation for the state to expand. So the implication of that is that we can scale. Can you tell us a little bit about how you did that scaling and what mattered most to those successful replications?
[00:21:05] Kimberly Steadman: Yeah, replication is hard, and it’s a pressure point for schools, so it is a place where often results go down. We were lucky, as you said, to go in the other direction. We’ve improved as we’ve grown, especially in the first few years after expanding. I think there are a lot of factors for that. We had an incredibly strong staff when we moved to expand. And because of that, we were able to seed each of our campuses with high performing teachers from our original campus, and so when we started our second campus, we started with kindergarten, first, and fifth grade, and we were able to move our strongest kindergarten teacher and our strongest first grade teacher and very strong fifth grade teachers over to our second campus, and then the year after started another, and being able to move people within the city because they wanted that leadership opportunity to move into another campus.
[00:21:54] I think provided a really strong start for our schools and we were able to do that because our campuses weren’t that far apart from each other. Like we didn’t try to start one campus in Boston and one campus in Worcester and one in Spokane. Springfield, because they were all in Boston, we were able to have that kind of consistency of staff and leadership. So, I think that’s one of ours. one of our organizational values is we grow best together, and we hold that dear. And so, we have always been a very open door, like lone wolves don’t work out at Brooke. You really need to be part of the team and sharing ideas and trying to work together and our leaders really exemplify that.
[00:22:29] And so being able to learn from each other is something that we’ve held dear the whole time. For instance, we have instructional rounds where leaders from each of our campuses are in each other’s buildings, looking at classes together and talking about what feedback they would give so that we can make sure that our visions are consistent between campuses. We have principal meetings all the time. So, people are working together. Our assistant principal groups are working together. So, there is a strong feeling of connection between our campuses. And so, we were able. to grow on the academic side with that. Also, we did not have to spend a lot of organizational resources doing a lot of recruiting and things because our wait list has been so long that like we were able to start at other campuses and immediately have enough students and therefore have enough tuition and be able to make the financial side work well.
[00:23:17] Our waitlist, when we were expanding, it generally is between, 2, 000 kids on our waitlist every year. And so, because of that, we’re able to fully fill our schools as we grew rapidly. And then there are some of the not exciting but very true things about, acquiring real estate and that we, our good financial stewards, our organization, and so we were able to move quickly to build spaces and not have to move around the city because that kind of stress.
[00:23:41] Steven Wilson: Kimberley, sorry to interrupt you, but can I just punctuate the buildings? Fascinating. I love buildings.
[00:23:46] Yeah.
[00:23:47] Steven Wilson: And we did a lot of real estate development at Ascend too, and God knows it’s hard. But I just want to punctuate the three things that you mentioned. This cultural element of identifying with the whole and not just with your own school, can be a problem in charter networks. Huge. And then this idea of seeding, and the seeding only works if you have enough density in the first school of highly capable teachers. To be able to afford the loss. those are just, I just think that the things you mentioned are so interesting. I want to ask you about this extraordinary phenomenon of Boston having some of the best charter results in the country and the most progress at closing achievement gaps. I’m very curious to hear from you, what you think are the most prominent factors for driving that exceptional success. Is authorizing, the quality of authorizing, an important part of the story? Is it the labor pool of Boston that people would point to? The strength of the underlying charter statute? Or is it more about the drive and ambition of founders like you, who were educated to be ambitious, visionary people? Where would you place the explanation?
[00:25:02] Kimberly Steadman: It’s hard to tease it all out. I would say everything that you just said really matters. I think that the founders of the initial charter networks in Boston were very energetic leaders who were really passionate and clear eyed about providing excellent education to our kids and what that took. And I would say that, the drive and the energy from some of those founders was really inspiring. And so, it was like, I want my school to be better than John King’s, although we went to college together and it’s wonderful, but I want to help her for her future.
[00:25:32] Steven Wilson: That’s really important, actually,
[00:25:35] Kimberly Steadman: Like I was inspired by him and wanted to,
[00:25:37] Steven Wilson: It’s so interesting because ambition and competition is out these days, but there’s a very warm and important role that it plays.
[00:25:45] Kimberly Steadman: I think that, it matters how it’s done, of course, because I wanted outperforming people who I deeply respected by them rising and me rising to Competition can definitely turn to a negative place, but because we had strong relationships with each other, it doesn’t, it didn’t feel like a negative competition, which things can easily move to. And I think that it’s a deep love too, of my adopted city, that I love Boston and I just want more. Great seats in great schools in Boston. And so, people had that mentality. Like we visited each other’s schools. We like learned from each other actively because competition can also lead to people shutting their doors and trying to hide their secrets.
[00:26:23] And that was not at all the culture. So, I think that that was another, we grow best together, like we’re all in it to help our city and to rise together. I do think that the high state standards matter too, though. So, there are some structural things that like the rigorous assessment, like I love MCAS. I think it’s a test that I want my own children to be able to do well on, and I want the same thing for our kids here. I think that it provides us with a good test where kids have to think deeply and write and problem solve, and it’s gotten better over time. So, I think that having that is helpful, and then, yeah, having one charter authorizer I think is actually a very positive thing, and that early on the state was willing to shut down some schools that were not serving kids in the right way.
[00:27:07] Steven Wilson: Yes, and it has a very illustrious sequence of deputy commissioners or whatever their title was at the time that were running those offices. You’ve got Scott Hamilton, all kinds of Kirby and fabulous people. Okay, so now to turn a little bit to the darker side since, say, the 2016 charter school ballot initiative. I’m going to ask you a question about the ballot loss. The charter sector in Massachusetts has been struggling some more. And can you talk a little bit about that ballot loss, the various charter caps and regulations? And maybe also as another contributor, the new and different ideological commitments of freshly minted teachers. And how that might be changing the game and the challenges that you and other charter leaders face.
[00:27:56] Kimberly Steadman: Yeah. The ballot loss was really tough for us. It took some wind out of people’s sails. I think that it’s because the unions out messaged us and were very Tenacious in their campaign in a way that was really successful. Like we lived in an area of Boston, Roslindale at that point. And we would even have a sign up for yes on question two. And I would still wake up with my car having a flyer for no one to in my own driveway next to my sign that I could put in my yard, like they were just trying to get to everyone.
[00:28:29] I think that it was rough, but I don’t think it impacted what we were doing in our schools. I think it just made us quiet politically. At this point, we just want to fly under the radar and not have our funding cut, which is a pretty small goal, I would say. And so, I think that was something that then made it that we could focus just on our schools and not on replicating. And so it was a moment that we could do that. We also never had a, we’re going to take over all of a city plan, so it didn’t really change that much for us day to day. But, given our wait list, we would have considered a bigger scale, although not a huge one. And it’s just that, that we know that more families want a Brooke education than can get it.
[00:29:09] I wish my kids went here. So, it was hurtful in a we need to think more about PR, but I don’t think it like changed the day-to-day education our kids are getting. within their schools. The thoughts on like people going into teaching now and some like changes. We’ve had a lot of things happen in the last decade and COVID is no small thing. And I think that pendulums swing back and forth. And this is the long view of someone who’s been at the school for 20 years and will stay longer than this year, that we’re always trying to make our schools the best possible place for our kids and want them to feel valued and seen for who they are and all their complexities, but And I think Charter has had some work to do to think about that.
[00:29:48] We are really comfortable with our high behavior and academic expectations that we hold our kids to. We just gave a parent survey over the last two weeks, and 85 percent of our parents gave favorable responses to our academics, our behavior expectations, and then some neutral and very few negatives. So, we really do feel aligned with our families on why they’re choosing Brooke. And I think that sometimes there are, Some people who are grappling sometimes with, are we doing right by our kids and then bringing everyone back to, who we are and having that clarity of vision behind it so that you can weather storms like COVID with that clarity of who we are and that we are serving our families who chose this education for their kids.
[00:30:29] And I think there’s been some exposure of, if people aren’t clear about who they are and what they’re messaging and what they’re about. That it can feel like a really unmoored time as people are changing some of their thoughts about their relationship to their work and to what it means to serve others and how to balance things for themselves.
[00:30:47] Steven Wilson: Okay. I think on that, that one thing that pops out of that is again, vision clarity, right? You’re all about instruction. I heard that again and again. I was so excited that you saying staying true to the instructional core earlier in the hour and building a culture of achievement. And I think that part of your success. I think that’s robust enough to withstand claims for other purposes in the building. And I’m not sure that was the case at many of the other Boston Charges, particularly as they underwent leadership changes. And then, as a result of those kinds of challenges to their ways and approaches, We’ve now seen sinking results, but that’s not been the case for you.
[00:31:35] Kimberly Steadman: We’re definitely lower than we were pre COVID, and we are fighting to get back.
[00:31:39] Steven Wilson: Not nearly as much as others.
[00:31:41] Kimberly Steadman: No, not nearly as much as others. yeah.
[00:31:44] Steven Wilson: And that’s important.
[00:31:45] Kimberly Steadman: Yeah, the charter sector has definitely had a change in. In outcomes, I don’t know other schools well enough that I would feel comfortable talking about why for other schools, but I know that for us, it really is being clear of who we’re about. We have our core values as an organization. We stick to our organizational values. And we stick to a clarity of we are who we are and that.
[00:32:07] Steven Wilson: And because you have that clarity, you are gaining teachers who want to do that. You have that. if we were talking business, we would talk about, I don’t know, the value proposition.
[00:32:17] You have total clarity about that. And so you actually draw in teachers from other Boston charters that are dismayed by the changes that are taking place in their own schools.
[00:32:29] Kimberly Steadman: We definitely have our headshot concept from our good to great and are very focused on what we are is we are about great teaching. And that is our focus all the time.
[00:32:38] Steven Wilson: Exactly. So lastly, one last question for you, Kimberly. The charter sector has achieved great results for students in Massachusetts, but now it’s confronting real political challenges. I just wanted to ask you, what would you like to see the policymaking community and the wider folks out there help you? What would be most helpful to maintaining your results and growth and impact?
[00:33:06] Kimberly Steadman: Yeah, with policymakers, I want to make sure our funding doesn’t get cut. I’m very worried about the unpopularity of charters being a way to cut funding for education in one sector, but our families deserve to have their schools funded. And so always are looking for support with that. at this point, we listen to voters. We’re not trying to do any kind of increase in the charter sector at this point. I do think there needs to be a lot more that either charters do or. Any advocates help us do of getting out the message to everyone that we’re public schools, because that became very clear to us on the ballot initiative, that is not the perception and the understanding.
[00:33:46] And so just more truth telling around that, that we are public schools, and then I am always an advocate for charters being shut down, to be honest. So there was a hiatus on that. Things are changing right now, and schools are choosing to give back charters or on probation, and I don’t have any thoughts on any individual school that, that I would ever want to speak about, but I just think that the charter proposition is that this increased autonomy that you get has to come with increased accountability and accountability. Thank you. Because of COVID, all of that got disrupted with accountability measures, but we’re coming out of that now. And I hope that we can stick with that and also stick with MCAS, so that we can have an objective measure that we’re all holding ourselves accountable to. I’m concerned about the pushback right now that is happening against MCAS, and I hope that doesn’t remain a story for long and that instead we can keep the MCAS where it is and really commit to. Thank you. Having schools that are preparing our students for that objective standard.
[00:34:46] Steven Wilson: Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. The threat to MCAS is very serious because it’ll be replaced by all kinds of inconsistent measures that won’t give us a true read on how children are doing, and that’s essential.
[00:35:00] Albert Cheng: That actually takes us to the end, Kimberly. And so, I just want to thank you again for your time and for sharing about all that you’re doing at Broke and its history and how you got to where you’re at today. Thank you.
[00:35:10] Kimberly Steadman: Thank you guys for inviting me and for this great conversation.
[00:35:14] Steven Wilson: Thanks so much for coming.
[00:35:29] Albert Cheng: Yeah, I really enjoyed that interview too, Steven. it’s always a real treat to hear about some of the good work that folks are doing in and in some of our schools.
[00:35:37] Steven Wilson: Particularly her, it’s incredible what Brooke has accomplished.
[00:35:42] Albert Cheng: Yeah. This is going to take us to the conclusion of our show. But before we sign off, there is the tweet of the week, and this week’s This tweet of the week comes from Ed Week. It’s actually a reference to an article about two schools experience with their cell phone policy. One school leader can’t use cell phones, the other embraced them. What works? So I know we’ve talked a little bit about this on the show before, what do we do with cell phones? How do we What policies do we set at schools to optimize learning, really, or to eliminate distraction? I’ll point listeners to this interesting article. It talks about a middle school that enforced a ban and seemed to work, according to their school leader. And then a high school that actually encouraged the use of cell phones.
[00:36:30] And in their minds, it seemed to work. take a look at some of those stories and see what you think about those. That brings us to the end of our show. Join us next week. We’re going to have Maya Shiloni, who is an Israeli student at Harvard University, to come and discuss anti Semitism on campus. And Steven, finally, I want to thank you for co-hosting. It’s been a pleasure to run the show with you. Thank you. I’ve loved it. Yep. Hope to have you back again. And until then to everybody, I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day.
This week on The Learning Curve co-hosts U-Arkansas Prof. Albert Cheng and Steven Wilson interview Kimberly Steadman, co-director of Edward Brooke Charter Schools. Steadman reflects on her educational background and leadership in urban charter public schools. She discusses the importance of rigorous academic expectations for K-12 students, and how this outlook influences her educational philosophy co-directing the Brooke charter school network. Ms. Steadman shares the challenges faced by Massachusetts charters due to the post-2016 ballot loss, and how she and other charter public school leaders advance supportive policy reforms.
Stories of the Week: Albert shared an article from The New York Times sharing the impact of Socrates, Plato, and liberal arts in higher education; Steven discussed a news story in The Hill on ‘national tutoring corps’ to fix education gaps.
Guest:
Tweet of the Week:
https://x.com/educationweek/status/1790536599966798073
Precision Law Enforcement: Can Gunfire Detection Technology Serve and Protect Everyone?
/in Featured, News, Podcast Hubwonk /by Editorial StaffClick here to read a transcript
[00:00:00] Joe Selvaggi: This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi. Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. Memorial Day marks the start of summer and an attending rise in gun related crime, particularly affecting marginalized communities in cities nationwide, including Boston. One tool that has emerged to help law enforcement address gunfire is ShotSpotter, a network of sensors placed in high crime areas.
[00:00:28] These sensors enable police to triangulate the sounds of gunshots and respond swiftly. Before ShotSpotter’s deployment, about 80 percent of urban gunfire incidents went unreported, hindering criminal investigations and timely aid to victims. However, critics of sound thinking, the company behind ShotSpotter, are concerned that the technology could lead to over policing in vulnerable communities.
[00:00:53] U. S. Senator from Massachusetts Ed Markey has requested the Department of Homeland Security investigate the use of ShotSpotter for potential violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against Sound Thinking, alleging that the technology disproportionately targets communities of color and results in unfair policing.
[00:01:15] How does ShotSpotter work? How is it deployed? And how well can it address public concerns for its accuracy and precision to allay fears that its use unfairly targets vulnerable communities for illegal searches or arrests? My guest today is Tom Chittum, Senior Vice President of Forensics at Sound Thinking and former Associate Deputy Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
[00:01:39] Mr. Chittum, an attorney with over 27 years of law enforcement experience, has conducted and overseen thousands of investigations and frequently testified as an expert witness. He will discuss the capabilities and limitations of ShotSpotter technology, the criteria used to select sensor deployment locations and how ShotSpotter enhances police department’s ability to respond to gun crime. He will also address the concerns for civil rights and liberties of his critics by describing how the tools are a complement and not a substitute for high quality law enforcement practices. When I return, I’ll be joined by Senior Vice President of Sound Thinking, Tom Chittum.
[00:02:17] Okay, we’re back. This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi, and I’m now pleased to be joined by Sound Thinking’s Senior Vice President of Forensics, Tom Chittum. Welcome to Hubwonk, Tom. I appreciate you having me. Great. Well, I’m thrilled to have you on the show. your firm’s technology has been in our news recently when our, our junior senator from Massachusetts, Senator Ed Markey, wrote a letter, recently wrote a letter to Homeland Security, asking for an investigation into grant funding for your Shot Spotter technology.
[00:02:44] Your firm’s name is, Sound Thinking, but the technology’s shot spotter. the concerns, Senator Markey had were that your technology as it’s deployed. May run afoul of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I’ll just state for our listeners who don’t know that, particular Civil Rights Act, it’s, “no person in the United States shall on the ground of race, color, or national origin be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
[00:03:15] So his letter was also signed by another of our senators, Senator Elizabeth Warren and our representative Ayanna Pressley. So, for that reason, I wanted to have you on the show to talk about the technology, how it’s designed, how it’s deployed. And, frankly, with our listeners discuss the promise and pitfalls of the technology so they can form their own decisions.
[00:03:33] So, as our listeners know, I like to start at the beginning in a very basic level, with, a brief description of what ShotSpotter technology is, and what does it do? So, let’s start there.
[00:03:44] Tom Chittum: Sure. Well, if you had asked me before I knew how ShotSpotter worked, I would have had to guess that it was powered by magic, because how could it possibly do what it claims to do?
[00:03:58] But I know now that it is not magic at all. In fact, its basic math, science, and technology that’s been harnessed for public safety good. And the company has an interesting background, and I think we may talk about that, but at a base level, our system uses sensors that are spread out over a large area, they detect loud impulsive sounds like gunfire, and then we go through a process of calculating the time difference of arrival, the time that, that, sound reaches each of our sensors, we calculate the difference, and by doing that, we can determine where the sound came from.
[00:04:35] We also use some processes to sort out things that are not gunfire, so that what’s left behind is gunfire. We publish those to our customers, mostly the police, so they can respond quickly and precisely to where gunfire occurs. It does all of that in less than 60 seconds, and that matters because when you’re talking about gunshots in urban areas, very often time is of the essence.You’re dealing with gunshot wound victims, you’re dealing with ephemeral evidence. And so, police agencies all across the country use Shot Spotter as one tool along with other tools to help address gun violence.
[00:05:13] Joe Selvaggi: So that to me, sure, may sound like magic, but that may align, aligns with my own view of, let’s say, a GPS, how my phone knows where I am based on how my signal might bounce off of towers or satellites.
[00:05:24] So I think it’s, you’re doing very similar technology, with sound. Now I read it in some of the background that there may be as many as 34 individual patents in your technology. How did all of this technology begin? What are the origins of Shot Spotter?
[00:05:38] Tom Chittum: Well, it’s a great story. Dr. Bob Schoen, Dr. Bob, he still works for the company today, and he’s a great gentleman, in the mid-90s, could hear gunfire near his house. In California, it occurred to him that he might be able to use the same processes that earthquake scientists use to locate the epicenter of earthquakes. He might be able to use that to locate where the sound of the gunfire was coming from.
[00:06:04] And so he built a prototype, and he tested it and it worked. And that’s how Shot Spotter was born. Our headquarters is still in California, but as I mentioned, we’ve spread all across the country and now the globe. We’ve got international customers, too. More than 170, customers, rely on Shot Spotter to help them know where shootings occur, but it all started, from the idea that one man had. In his home in California, I had a recent occasion to sit down and talk with him, and he said during, some of the early tests, to see whether or not it could detect sounds, he had set up sensors on his house and some of his neighbors houses, and he would go outside and pop balloons to see if the sound would trigger it.
[00:06:49] The system now, of course, this is an early prototype. So don’t let that mislead you into thinking that the system is set off by balloons. But what he was doing was testing whether or not he could locate precisely where the sound was originating from. and he did. We do have a lot of patents. I said that it’s a simple system and it is, it’s very sophisticated in the way that it works, the data that we use to power it, but at base level it really relies on well-known and fairly simple scientific concepts.
[00:07:22] Joe Selvaggi: So, you mentioned briefly that it’s deployed, I think you said 170 different clients across the country and also internationally. Just briefly, name some of the big cities that are using it. I’m going to include Boston in there, but also maybe if there are other Massachusetts cities that have also used the technology.
[00:07:40] Tom Chittum: So, we’re deployed in major cities across the country. Presently, we’re still deployed in Chicago. We’re deployed in New York City. We’re deployed in Boston, but we’re also deployed in very small cities, too, and medium sized cities. And sometimes people think that ShotSpotter is only a tool for very large metropolitan areas, but the reality is gun violence affects communities in a lot of places in a lot of ways. And so, really in some places, even our smaller customers, end up being some of the best users because they have a manageable problem. They can respond effectively. And so, we’ve really seen it put to good use in a lot of places across the country.
[00:08:23] Joe Selvaggi: So, let’s focus on Boston again. I know you’re in DC now but I’m in Boston and it’s a big city, with lots of different neighborhoods. I want our listeners to understand when a city like Boston, which has a common police department, maybe lots of precincts, ahead of police, when they call you and say, we need your help. How do you decide where to put these sensors, these, this technology that’s listening for shots. You can’t put them everywhere. It’s a big city. Where do you, what happens next when you say, okay, let us help? Where do you decide to put the sensors?
[00:08:51] Tom Chittum: Well, we decide where to put the sensors, but we don’t necessarily decide where to put the coverage areas. So, when a customer approaches us, obviously it’s because they want to address the gun crime issues that they have. Look at objective historical data, things like reports of homicide, prior reports of gunfire, to try and determine those areas where the tool can do the greatest good. I wish ShotSpotter was deployed everywhere. There is a diminishing return on your investment if you’re deploying it in places where there is no gunfire. You pay for a service that doesn’t get used very often. Even still, there are some value in putting it in places like that where it serves as an early warning system for when incidents occur. For instance, we’re deployed on college campuses across the university where these low frequency high consequence events like school shootings may occur and where, timely intelligence is of the essence but, with respect to, police, departments and communities, we look at their, historical crime data. Where is it that they experience the most gunfire? Where have most people been killed by gunfire? And then it’s ultimately up to the customer to decide where the system should be deployed.
[00:10:17] Once that’s determined, the company itself deploys the sensors, and we keep those locations secret for a few reasons. So, we go out, we install them ourselves, we maintain them ourselves. But ultimately, it’s the customer who decides what area gets covered.
[00:10:34] Joe Selvaggi: Now, you already mentioned that it’s a very advanced technology, but it’s using sound. Cities are a noisy place. I know, I live in cities, always have, how precise can the, the sensors triangulate on where a particular gunshot is occurring. There’s echoes and all kinds of confounding noises. How precise? Are we talking about a neighborhood wide, block wide, or can you zero in on a precise location of where a shot was heard?
[00:11:02] Tom Chittum: Yeah, so, well, first, when you talk about the science behind it, you mentioned earlier that we have several patents. We post them on our website. We’ve also written academic papers explaining exactly what it is we’re doing. Some of them are quite dense for a layperson like me. I have to read them slowly to understand them.
[00:11:23] But we explain the science. It’s not secretive what it is that we are doing. And our system, uses several layers of filtering to make sure that the sounds that we are publishing to our customers are, in fact, gunfire. So, the first way is just by the nature of the way the sensors are deployed. They’re spread out over a large area. It’s not really a filter, but you might think of that as spatial filtering, because our system is only triggered when three or more sensors detect a loud impulsive sound. So, if you went outside, and slammed your car door, it might make an impulsive sound, but it’s not going to reach three sensors spread out over that area.
[00:12:03] If you went out and screamed at the top of your lungs, that sound might be able to reach three or more sensors, but it’s not an impulsive sound. And so, our system is only triggered when three or more sensors detect a loud, impulsive sound, like a bang, a boom, or a pop. And then the system goes through a process of locating where that sound originated from to your question, we are quite precise. Our system locates to a precise latitude and longitude. To account for things like, the diffraction around buildings, we set our margin of error at 25 meters. So, for frame of reference, that’s about how far an adult can throw a baseball. So, if you stood in the middle of a circle and threw a baseball, in that circle is where we guarantee, the gunfire has originated from.
[00:12:52] And we do give guarantees to our customers. Our guarantee is 90%. No system that operates in the dynamic real world, as ours does, could ever be 100%, but we do set a high standard. We carefully track metrics. We report those to our customers. We report them to all of our customers, and we give them a financial incentive to provide us feedback.
[00:13:15] If we make mistakes and don’t meet the 90 percent threshold, guarantee that we give them. They pay us less. And so, they’re encouraged to provide us feedback. Let us know when we make mistakes so we can use that information to make the performance of the system better and measuring that performance across all of our customers over many years.
[00:13:35] We know that we keep an accuracy rate of about 97 percent, and so that’s pretty good. occasionally the system, will miss a shooting that actually occurs. There can be reasons for that. Our system has limitations. It’s only designed to detect outdoor gunfire. So, gunfire that occurred in an enclosure like in a home or a car may not be loud enough to reach our sensors or gunfire that occurred with a silenced firearm, a silencer, might not produce a loud enough report to reach our sensors. But to your question, it’s very accurate and it’s very fast and those things matter and matter, from academic research it pays big dividends for the police. They use the system and the communities that benefit from it.
[00:14:23] Joe Selvaggi: So, I want to unpack all the things you just mentioned. I just want to make a fine point on the precision. You say, you locate it, but you also mentioned there’s all kinds of things you don’t detect or detect but you don’t identify as gunfire. I’ve heard it alleged that things like firework and let’s face it a firecracker is an explosion like a rifle round or a gunshot or slamming car doors or as you say I’m not so much concerned about someone yelling but there’s all kinds of things that sound gun like. Would you consider let’s say a balloon popping or a garage door slamming or a firework going off? If you identify that would be considered an error, right? If you arrived and you saw fireworks, that would be scored as, we thought it was gunfire, it was a noise, but it wasn’t a gun. Would that be a mistake, or would that just be par for the course?
[00:15:14] Tom Chittum: So, let me clarify how that works. If we published it to the police and said, this was gunfire, but it was not. That would be a mistake. That our system detects it is not a mistake. Our system detects loud, impulsive sounds. But then we go through a process of filtering. So, I mentioned the spatial filtering.
[00:15:33] The point of that is just that the sense system covers a wide area. And so only, impulsive sounds of a sufficiently loud character will trigger the system to even detect and locate where it occurred. Once it does that, we use a patented process for filtering out sounds that are not characteristic of gunfire. Again, that patent is right there on our, website. It’s a public record. Anyone who wants to look at how we’re doing this, The system is very good at filtering out sounds that are not likely gunfire, but everything that has characteristics of gunfire then goes through a human review process where they do additional filtering to remove sounds that are not gunfire, and only after those trained reviewers determine that the sound is, in fact, gunfire, does it get published.
[00:16:26] And so there’s a number of levels of review. And there’s a big misunderstanding about what it is that our reviewers and our system is doing. Some people think that they only use their ears, that they just listen to a sound and try and guess whether it’s a firework or a firearm, but that’s not it. they also use their ears. They’re listening for clues. That it might be gunfire. Things like the cadence of gunfire, consistent, steady, strengths of the pulses that don’t overlap. They’re also using their ears to listen for audio clues that it is not gunfire. The whistling, sizzling. The popping of firecrackers, the inconsistent pulse strength, or overlapping pulses from a lot of firecrackers being lit.
[00:17:11] But they’re also looking at things like situational factors. If it’s 3 a.m. in a residential area, it’s not likely road construction. They are looking at sensor participation. Because our sensors are spread out over an area, we can determine the shape of the fire. of the propagation of the sound. And sound propagates omnidirectional, which is just a fancy way of saying it spreads out in all directions at the same speed. Think of it like a bubble expanding. But the way gunfire is made tends to be very directional. And so, our reviewers will assess the shape of the sensor participation. Is it linear, conical, versus encircling the sound? They’ll also look for things like distance to the nearest sensor. It reports that sort of information too. The sound of gunfire will travel further. And there are a number of other factors that they’re looking at too, so when people are told it just hears loud sounds and publishes them, that’s just evidence that either they want to mislead someone about how our system works or they simply don’t understand it.
[00:18:15] Joe Selvaggi: So, these, trained listeners, who could have many ways to analyze the sound, that you just outlined, are they your employees or are they people you train, for the benefit of the city so they can use your technology better?
[00:18:26] Tom Chittum: They are our employees. So, we maintain an incident review center. It is operational 24 -7, 365, and has been for more than 12 years, and they review every alert before it gets published for our customers. Because we are controlling those processes, we can maintain very strict metrics on their performance and keep a high and consistent standard across all of our customers.
[00:18:55] Joe Selvaggi: Maybe this is a sort of a too deep question or too leading of a question, but how does the accuracy translate into identifying gun related crime? Meaning, do you measure your accuracy against just gunshots, which I can’t imagine good benevolent reasons for gunshots going off in the middle of the city. But how well does that translate into gun related crime? Meaning, you don’t know whether the gun is being shot for fun or, bank robbery. How, how does that translate into, law enforcement, police? The effectiveness of the cops catching actual criminals doing crimes?
[00:19:32] Tom Chittum: Well, that’s a great question, Joe. So, when we publish an alert of gunfire, for us, it goes into the ether. We don’t know if it is celebratory gunfire or homicidal gunfire.
[00:19:49] I like to tell people that we can alert police to the what, the when, and the where of gunfire, but not the who. That requires them to respond and investigate. They provide us, feedback when the incident involved an officer, and so we have records of those. But most of the time, we don’t know what was on the other side, and so it really is up to the police to track those metrics, how often are they recovering evidence? How often are they locating gunshot wound victims? How often are they making arrests? There are a number of different metrics. They’re not all created equal. And what we see is there are a lot of factors that influence those rates too. What are the best practices that the department employs?
[00:20:34] How quickly are they responding? How much time are they spending on the scene when they get there? And so, from our perspective, that 97 percent really does depend on our customers letting us know when we make mistakes. It happens sometimes, not much. Occasionally, a shooting will occur and for whatever reason, our system won’t detect it. And our customers will say, hey, we have this gunshot wound victim. You missed it. What happened? And we’ll look at it and try and assess why that happened and that’s how our system performs. But again, measuring across 170 ish customers over many years and literally millions of incidents, we know that we keep a very high accuracy rate, in the high 90s.
[00:21:22] Joe Selvaggi: Well, that’s great. And the answer to your question brought to me one of the questions I wanted to ask perhaps earlier, but I noted at the top of the show that your title is Senior Vice President of Forensics. And some of your answers suggest forensic analysis, looking at what happened, taking apart the sounds and saying what really went on here. Does your title as Senior Vice President of Forensics suggest your expertise is used in a court of law, either for criminal or civil trials?
[00:21:48] Tom Chittum: Yeah. So, I am an attorney. I’m a licensed attorney. I have been for many years, but I didn’t always work as an attorney. Before I came to work for Sound Thinking, what was Shot Spotter when I joined it, I actually worked for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Farms, Explosives, the ATF. I was an ATF agent for almost all of my adult life. I started out as a plain old agent in the streets working cases, but I worked my way up to the top. Through the ranks and when I retired in 22, I was the deputy director of the agency. I was the chief operating officer and that gave me a lot of opportunity to travel across the country talking to law enforcement leaders, elected officials, the public, the media.
[00:22:30] About how law enforcement can use the tools, the tactics, the technology of crime gun intelligence to do a better job of investigating gun crime. Because of that, I knew about Shot Spotter. At the time, though, it wasn’t so obvious to me the role it would play in the courtroom. Prior to coming to this company, I had only read one book. Court case about Shot Spotter. It involved the attempted murder of an ATF agent in Chicago. This agent was shot in the head. He survived. I believe he is indestructible. But Shot Spotter evidence was used in his trial to convict the gang member that shot him. Now that I’m here, though, I realize that Shot Spotter very often ends up in court.
[00:23:16] And so to your question, my role here is helping make sure that the evidence that our system produces is used effectively in court. And I make that point, without specifying prosecution or defense. Occasionally people We’ll assume that because we have contractual relationships largely with police agencies, we have some sort of pro law enforcement, pro prosecution bias, but that’s just not true. Our evidence is our evidence, and it is sometimes used by defense effectively in court too. That’s up to the attorneys to argue about what the evidence means. It’s our place just to say what the evidence is. And so, I oversee a team of professionals who appear in court and testify about what Shot Spotter detected. They’ve testified in over 300 cases in 24 states, and despite what some would lead you to believe, courts overwhelmingly acknowledge shot spotter as an appropriate and a unique factor in assessing things like reasonable suspicion of criminal activity, and they’ll also admit Shot Spotter evidence for its scientific value as well.
[00:24:31] Joe Selvaggi: So, let’s test your, bona fides as an honest broker here. If you, we’ve been talking about all the virtues of the technology, where might it be vulnerable to misuse? if it’s capabilities, but also its limitations and you testify on behalf of both, what would you say would, what are the limits? What can’t it do? What, where are its blind spots, if you will, or deaf spots, I suppose would be a better analogy. What, share with our listeners where it might be vulnerable.
[00:24:58] Tom Chittum: Well, so, I mentioned before that we can tell you the what, the when, and the where, not the who. Sometimes we can tell you the how, and I can give you an example of that. So, once we alert police to a shooting incident, it is really up to them to decide what to do. To use it effectively, one of the criticisms that sometimes people will make is that somehow Shot Spotter violates civil rights, and they’re often talking about this idea of stop and frisk policing. Shot Spotter says gunfire occurred here.
[00:25:32] Then it’s up to the police to go there and investigate. And when they do, they have to develop their independent, reasonable suspicion of criminal activity if they’re going to detain someone. This is America. You are free to go about your business without interference from police. But the Supreme Court has said that if police have reasonable suspicion to believe that you’re engaged in criminal activity, they can temporarily detain you while they investigate.
[00:25:57] If they have a reasonable suspicion to believe that you’re armed, they can conduct a pat down. for a weapon. and if that happens, and if police make an arrest, then as every criminal defendant in America does, that person has a right to challenge that evidence. on the stand. Shot Spotter’s role in that is limited we can say that gunfire occurred here at this time, but after that it’s up to the police. And so, I would say that those are the limitations of the system. We can’t tell you what the person who shot the gun was wearing, or driving, or where they went after the shooting, unless they shoot again. And very often we do detect multiple shooting incidents that are related. So those are the limitations of the technology. I don’t think, though, that’s a surprise. If you look at how law enforcement does its job, there’s no single tool that it can rely on. There are lots of tools in the toolbox. Ours is simply one, and that’s what it does.
[00:26:57] Joe Selvaggi: So, I want to go deeper again and press you a little harder there, because they say, okay, I appreciate that we don’t lose our rights merely because a shot was heard near us, right? We’re, our rights are not diminished by a Shot Shotter, in theory. But let’s imagine a policeman hears, or your technology tells the police that it has heard a shot being fired in a particular location. The police arrive. They know something bad, a shot was fired. So, you’ve got all kinds of people in every direction. They know a gun has gone off. So, immediately, their level of suspicion is higher, and also, it’s not just, they’re not spitting on the sidewalk, they’re firing guns, so they know somebody there is armed. Doesn’t that turn everybody’s spidey sense up to 11 and say, okay, everybody here is guilty until I determine they’re innocent. Isn’t this sort of inviting police to arrive, assume guilt broadly, and assume deadly force, potentially, there? It, to me, yes, of course their legal rights are not diminished, but the suspicion level is automatically higher given that you happen to be, let’s say, in the wrong place at the wrong time when a gun went off. What would you say to that? I know it’s a big question, but I’m sure our listeners are thinking it.
[00:28:06] Tom Chittum: Yeah, well, I think it’s a fair question. so, for one, I think it takes a little bit of a cynical view of law enforcement. I have been around policing my entire adult life. And what I have found is that most police are genuinely good people. Some of them are absolute heroes, but most of them just want to do a good job. They know that their work will be scrutinized in court. I think that the level of training that they get matters. but if you’ll look at the cases where Shot Spotter has been used, you’ll see that there is lots of information that police can rely on.
[00:28:42] First, let’s start with the alert itself. When we send an alert to our customers, we send audio with it. They can listen to the gunfire for themselves, and then we tell them a precise location. We’ll also include helpful tactical intelligence, like if an incident involved fully automatic gunfire or a large number of rounds being fired, so that they can prepare for that.
[00:29:07] Appropriately. Now, contrast a Shot Spotter alert to what happens with a 911 call, and I think it’s important to point out that, very often, no 911 calls come in at all. That’s one of the big gaps that Shot Spotter helps fill. But if a 911 call comes in, very often that caller has limited information. They say, I heard what I think was gunfire. It happened what I think sounded like out front. They can’t say if it’s on that block, or two blocks over, or three blocks over, the sound of gunfire will travel a long distance. So, in those situations, when, police only have a 911 call without specific details, they have no choice but to swarm the area, rove around, and see if they see something that looks suspicious.
[00:29:51] A Shot Spotter, however, gives them a precise location to start from. Now once they get there, their investigation must start, and sometimes it’s as simple as making contact with you, with people that you encounter, and say, hey, we got a report of gunfire. Did you see anything? Did you hear anything? very often, witnesses will say, yes, there was shooting, the person was wearing this or that. And so the limitation of the technology is only that we’re detecting the sound, we’re deploying them there, but what police do after that It’s up to the police, and I think, and I’ve said this many times, I don’t know that there’s been a more difficult time to be a cop, than it is today, right? The public expects the police to be faster, fairer, more transparent, more effective than ever before. But I actually don’t have a problem with that. I don’t think that the public should ever be able to hold law enforcement to a standard higher than it should hold to today itself too. And what I think we see is that a lot of police agencies are effectively using it. They’re honest brokers. They’re following the constitutional obligations that they have, and they’re only making stops when they can articulate the reasonable suspicion that Supreme Court says they must have.
[00:31:05] Joe Selvaggi: Yes, no one envies the role of a policeman, particularly in these days, this day and age. As you say, now that we have cameras and close scrutiny, police must be on their best behavior. All the time. Nevertheless, if we’re talking about, a case where suddenly, cops arrive and, let’s say they, they’ve been told by you that a shot was fired, And there’s no evidence we, they can’t figure out what happened and they do start, catching people and someone runs away and accidentally is shot, they maybe were, I don’t know, a low level drug, deal or something and they run and the police make the assumption that, that was the shooter and perhaps used deadly force on this person. How can you, deal with the, let’s say, either the political repercussions or the PR repercussions? At some level, the police wouldn’t have been there but for a shot spot or, and something bad happened. How do you inoculate yourself from what, it seems to me, inevitable that these kinds of occasions will happen? You don’t have to point to any particular case or any particular city where this may have happened, but what do you do in that situation?
[00:32:06] Tom Chittum: Well, look, I think it is awful when, police make mistakes that result in a wrongful death. As you point out, police have a lot of contact with a lot of people, and thankfully, the number of unjustifiable shootings is really low. To suggest that police wouldn’t have been there but for shot spotter, I think minimizes all of the other times where the police response was lifesaving, helped hold somebody accountable, helped get justice for a crime gun victim. Occasionally our critics will point to a couple of outlier incidents.
[00:32:42] There is one specific one, really only one in Chicago involving a young man. named Adam Toledo. Terrible circumstances. He was only 13 years old. but Shot Spotter did what Shot Spotter is supposed to do. It detected gunfire. Adam Toledo and the person he was with, were shooting in the middle of the night in, this area of Chicago and police responded.
[00:33:05] But once they got there, the shooting that occurred was really not something that Shot Spotter, was responsible for. And I would ask the question, do you think police should not respond when someone is shooting? the outlier example like that, though, really is that. And it does not minimize the hundreds of times that ShotSpotter locates gunshot wound victims, allows police to render aid, allows them to make arrests of actual shootings.
[00:33:33] In fact, you see it in Boston. If you look at headlines all across America about Shot Spotter, and you can remove the ones that are only opinion based, what you are left with is example after example of police responding to a shot spotter alert and finding gunshot wound victims, arresting offenders. And it’s because the technology really works. We are not simply getting lucky all of those times. We are alerting police to gunfire. And when shootings occur in urban areas, Timely response is important. Occasionally, the police are going to make mistakes, and that’s awful, and we should hold them to a high account. But that is not something that is Shot Spotter’s fault. Police should be investigating shooting incidents.
[00:34:18] Joe Selvaggi: Now, I’ve tried to, test you on all the sort of aspects or the sort of common criticisms of your technology, but I do want to acknowledge that there, again, I learned about this in my research, that there are, lawsuits or, made by, let’s say, the ACLU about, the general gist of their arguments is that, civil liberties are being violated. People are being over policed, or they’re being assumed to be guilty unnecessarily by virtue of the fact that they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether the shop herd was a valid one or not. Even if we assert that it was valid, it doesn’t make the people in the neighborhood any more suspicious than otherwise. I want to leave an open-ended question. Points do lawsuits like those from the ACLU make that I haven’t yet addressed? Where do they see weakness in your technology that I haven’t, tested you on? Well, in some ways,
[00:35:06] Tom Chittum: I think their argument is really a proxy argument. It’s not really Shot Spotter that they’re opposed to. It’s policing that they’re opposed to, and Shot Spotter is a convenient proxy for that. I think their complaint is about what some people will refer to as stop and frisk policing. And I understand that. Stop and frisk policing means that police see someone, they stop them, they pat them down for a weapon. As we talked about earlier, the Supreme Court has said, when police have reasonable suspicion to believe that a person is engaged in criminal activity, they can stop temporarily detain someone, and they can pat them down if they have reasonable suspicion to believe they have a weapon. The problem is when they stop and pat down people when they do not have reasonable suspicion that person is carrying a firearm and that would be unconstitutional in and of itself. They, I think sometimes, accuse ShotSpotter of blanketing areas with reasonable suspicion, but that simply isn’t how our technology works. Our technology locates to a precise latitude and longitude. And what the courts have said is when police show up, there are a lot of other factors that they should be assessing close spatial and temporal proximity is one. How quickly do police get there? How close is the person that they observed to where the shot spot or alert was? But there are a lot of other factors too. If a person is standing alone in that area, it’s different than if they’re being plucked from a crowd witness statement may corroborate what has happened there. And so, police have this challenging task of assessing Reasonable suspicion in stopping someone. You mentioned earlier a person that engages in unprovoked flight. They see the police, they turn, and run is one factor that police may assess.
[00:36:51] And frankly, I think police do a good job generally. the challenge with stop and frisk policing in theory, police, one, want to catch people that are illegally carrying firearms, and two, they want to, create this perception that carrying an illegal firearm is risky because police may stop you and pat you down. The downside to painting with such a broad brush is the effect it has on public support for policing. And I think that’s an important point to emphasize. The trust in law enforcement is absolutely crucial. You pointed out that gunfire is not spread evenly across our cities. It’s pretty localized.
[00:37:36] And very often people in that area know who’s responsible for the shootings, but if they don’t have faith in the police, if they don’t feel that what will happen when they call police will be just, then they won’t call, then they won’t cooperate, and I think Shot Spotter actually can help improve that too. So when shootings occur and police respond timely, it can reassure the community that police care. So, I don’t think we dug into it, but we know from research that 80 percent or more of gunfire in urban areas goes unreported to police through 911. Some of the reasons why are just practical. Many shootings happen in the middle of the night and law-abiding citizens are asleep. They may be awakened, but they don’t know exactly what it was they heard, and so they don’t call. But sometimes there are heartbreaking reasons. Some people have grown numb to the sound of gunfire and have just resigned themselves to living with it, or they think police don’t care and wouldn’t come anyways.
[00:38:36] But even though we know 4 out of 5 shootings go unreported, the average citizen doesn’t know that. And so, they hear gunfire, they look out their window, and they don’t see police show up. They think police know, but they don’t know, so they don’t come, and people lose faith. And ShotSpotter helps fill that gap and brings police there when shootings occur. And even when there is no gunshot wound victim located, and even when there’s no offender, arrested, there’s still value in having contact with the community. Knocking on doors, saying, hey, we got a report of gunfire. Just want to make sure everyone’s okay. Did you see anything? Did you hear anything? And I think low friction contacts like that can help reassure the majority of the people that live in those communities who are law abiding and who do want to see police response, that police do actually care about them.
[00:39:23] Joe Selvaggi: Yes, it’s curious to me that an organization like the ACLU that seems, its abiding concern is civil liberties, that they seem to ignore the civil liberties of the victims of crimes, right? Like, of course, we’re, I haven’t really pegged you for, pinned you down on the fact that these censors are primarily located in marginalized communities. Of course, as you say, it’s because that’s where crime happens. But of course, the people in the marginalized communities are also, are marginalized. They’re the victims of the crime that the wealthy are not being shot at. It’s often the most vulnerable. It seems odd that we are more concerned about the rights of potential criminals, and their obvious victims. I think there’s something like 20,000 murders in 2020, with guns, that’s a lot of people, so, what would you say, though, to critics that say, well, this invites over policing, now, where these signals would not have been picked up, now they are picked up, and now the police are everywhere, and people in those communities, unfortunately, you’ve got to do something about it gunshots, but they’re going to be, shaken down and brought in on, on other charges, meaning everybody in these communities is going to get locked up because someone fired a gun. What would you say to, so people who are, reflexively, concerned about, quote unquote, over policing in these communities?
[00:40:33] Tom Chittum: Well, there’s a couple of things that you mentioned there. For one, I am baffled. I really have been baffled by some of the opposition. As you mentioned, it seems that they are far more concerned about people being arrested than they are people being killed, and I just don’t understand that mindset. I also think that this perception of over-policing is largely overblown. But, to your point about gunfire not being spread everywhere, I wish that Shot Spotter was deployed all across America. If you cannot deploy it everywhere though, of course you will deploy it in the place where it can do the greatest good. And you talk about the impact in certain marginalized communities. I think an analogy is helpful. it’s well documented that Fire related deaths, not firearm, fire related deaths also occur in underprivileged, marginalized communities. And that’s because there has been disinvestment in public safety infrastructure in places like that.
[00:41:35] Shot Spotter is public safety infrastructure. The fact that it is deployed in the places where communities see the greatest gunfire, I think, is something that should be celebrated. It’s an investment in infrastructure that can help save lives. And there’s another point to make, when police respond, at a base level, Shot Spotter is just a basis for them to start an investigation. I mentioned that some of them are the rudimentary investigations. That a patrol officer would conduct. They show up to an area, they make contact with people they find, and say, hey, we got a report of gunfire. Did you see anything? Did you hear anything? but what we know from research is if police contribute, adequate follow up investigative resources to shooting incidents, they can increase their clearance rate. Now it makes sense that as a country we focus on homicide, right? That’s our worst crime and so we expect police to put the most effort into solving those. But what research shows is if they also put that sort of effort into non-fatal shootings, they can increase their clearance rate for that type of shooting, too. Non-fatal shootings are often just a failed homicide. And if you arrest and hold those offenders accountable, you prevent other shootings that they would commit. And we know that a very small number of people are responsible for most shootings. And one final point I would make. The failure to address Violent crime, in the communities where it happens most often, is, in my opinion, itself a root cause of crime.
[00:43:13] When criminals who commit violent crime feel emboldened and think they won’t be held accountable, they will commit more. And when people in those communities feel despair and don’t cooperate because they think it’s hopeless, the rate of crime increases. The quality of their life decreases. And so, I think adequately staffing, training, and supporting law enforcement, giving them tools like Shot Spotter, but other tools like ballistic imaging, focusing on improving critical tools like community support really can do a lot to reduce the crime that occurs in the communities where it happens most often. I like sitting on my front porch. I think everyone in America should feel safe sitting on theirs.
[00:44:00] Joe Selvaggi: Yes, indeed. I couldn’t agree more. I say, I don’t know how well you know Boston. I live in a neighborhood called Beacon Hill. I am certain if there was a gunshot in Beacon Hill, the Army, Navy, and Air Force Marines would be on top of it.
[00:44:09] And they would take it very seriously and they’d find the guy. That we tolerate gunshots in other communities, marginalized communities, is beyond comprehension for me. We should have zero tolerance and use any tool in our toolkit to identify. And as you mentioned, again, we maybe hit this idea too hard. Crime isn’t widespread and evenly distributed through all cities and all communities and all neighborhoods. It’s very narrowly, committed by a very few number of very determined criminals. It’s not, we’re not just finding criminals where we look. They happen to be in a particular area and you’re, and you’re looking in the right spot, now, you probably, we’re getting to the end of the time together. You hinted at the future, but I want to ask you, beyond, of course, you, you are a member of a company that you, you want to, grow your business. and so, I say you have, an incentive to want to have, Shot Spotter, everywhere.
[00:44:59] That said, let’s assume it’s not efficient, it’s not feasible. What do you see in the future of Shot Spotter or the technology like it? Do you think, again, you suggest that success begets success and failure begets failure. If we don’t catch criminals, they commit more crimes and become more emboldened. The flip side is if we lock people with guns, we all become safer and it’s a virtuous circle. What do you see the future of Shot Spotter and the future of being able to combat violent crime in the United States?
[00:45:24] Tom Chittum: So, I have three things to say. The third one will be the answer to your question. As to your previous comments, I don’t live in Boston, but I did visit recently to appear on a news program. And while I was there, I walked up to Beacon Hill. And bought a book at a bookstore. It seemed like a very safe community to me. You talked about crime not being spread everywhere, but I think it’s also important to emphasize another fact.
[00:45:51] Even though it’s concentrated in certain communities, those communities are not criminal. There are a lot of law-abiding people in those communities who want safe communities to live in. It’s a small number of people in a small number of places. And so, police really need to focus on those people in those places. That’s precision policing, and it’s something that Shot Spotter lends itself well to. You asked about the future of the company. So, as an attorney and in my role here, overseeing forensic services, every morning I get an alert about cases, case law that has mentioned Shot Spotter. This says something about me, how excited I am to read those every morning, but for months and months when I do get alerts.
[00:46:39] It’s cases that mention Shot Spotter, one time. Shots, police responded to a Shot Spotter alert, and then the case is about something entirely different. Sometimes these cases. I’ve mentioned Shot Spotter twice when there’s a footnote that says Shot Spotter is an acoustic gunshot detection system. My point for saying that is I believe that Shot Spotter is becoming routine evidence in criminal prosecutions. And I think that is a good thing. Much like the other technology, that can help make communities safer, like cameras, like ballistic imaging. what may seem newfangled really isn’t. It is, of course, important that we have appropriate policies and oversight. I also think it’s important to bring transparency to what law enforcement are doing.
[00:47:26] I don’t believe in secret policing. It’s part of the reason that we as a company very often appear in public on programs like this. To talk about what it is we do because we want the public to be informed, but I think they should be informed honestly. And when they do, I think that they will see that this is not controversial technology at all.
[00:47:45] It’s absolutely essential. It’s one tool and toolbox that can help make law enforcement more effective, can create safer communities, can hold offenders accountable, and, and can save lives. And let me conclude by mentioning that. Too often, our critics are focused on arrests, and while it is true that Shot Spotter alerts often do lead to arrests for gun related crimes, that’s not the system’s highest use. When gunfire occurs, very often there are gunshot wound victims left behind, and when you are shot, time is of the essence, and Shot Spotter gives police and first responders a precise location to get to. And we know from the experience of many of our customers that very often, Shot Spotter is the only thing that alerts them to a shooting that caused a wound.
[00:48:37] For instance, in a single year in Oakland, California, Shot Spotter led to a hundred gunshot wound victims where there was no corresponding 911 call. Those are people who would not get aid. But for the shot spotter alert. Now many of those gunshot wounds are not life threatening, and they will not die, but some of them are. And in fact, there was very recently a case like that in the Boston area, a man was shot in Dorchester, Shot Spotter alerted police, they responded. They rendered aid to him. He had life threatening injuries. The subsequent investigation allowed them to make an arrest related to that shooting. And I think that, at the end of the day, is exactly what Shot Spotter is there to do. To help police be effective, to save lives, to hold people accountable.
[00:49:22] Joe Selvaggi: Indeed. I’ll leave it there. Again, I think all of our listeners imagine a future where gun related crime is no more, this seems to be a scientific, objective, reasonable, tool to get us there, and is, that some Americans can’t walk their streets and feel safe is a tragedy and I think your technology will help Boston and other residents of cities around the country and around the globe to feel a little bit better and a little safer. Thank you very much, Tom, for joining me on Hubwonk today. You’ve been a fund of information and really, I think, have helped dispel a lot of the myths that are starting to float around, around this, what I consider really promising technology. Thank you for joining me.
Tom Chittum: Thanks for having me, Joe. I really appreciate it.
Joe Selvaggi: This has been another episode of Hubwonk. If you enjoyed today’s show, there are several ways to support Hubwonk and Pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us if you subscribed to Hubwonk on your iTunes Podcatcher. It would make it easier for others to find Hubwonk if you offer a five star rating or a favorable review. Of course, we’re grateful if you share Hubwonk with friends. If you have ideas or comments or suggestions for me about future episode topics, you’re certainly welcome to email me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute. org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
Joe Selvaggi talks with SoundThinking’s Senior Vice President Tom Chittum about gunfire location technology promises and pitfalls when deployed by law enforcement in high-crime communities.
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