Cleveland City Council is asking whether the city’s embrace of gunshot detection technology has been worth the money. 

Council members hashed through the results of a Cleveland State University study of the city’s ShotSpotter detection system at a meeting that lasted more than three hours last week. Members questioned city safety leaders, CSU researchers and representatives from SoundThinking, which makes Shotspotter, about the results.

Meanwhile, Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration is proposing a new system of gunshot detectors, surveillance cameras and license plate readers offered by a different company, Flock Safety. 

City Hall lined up the contract without a competitive bid, saying Flock was the only company offering the specific set of services the city was looking for. That raised some eyebrows on council. 

Under ShotSpotter’s current $3.2 million contract with the city, the company’s microphones monitor 13 square miles of Cleveland for sounds of gunshots. The study reviewed ShotSpotter alerts between November 2020 and April 2025. 

The technology is largely accurate and notified police about gunshots that residents didn’t report, the researchers found. ShotSpotter also led to an increase in top-priority dispatches, straining the understaffed department’s ability to respond to lower-priority calls. Most alerts do not result in actionable steps such as collecting evidence or finding victims, suspects or witnesses, the report found. 

Council members weighed these tradeoffs Friday, although they did not make a decision on whether to continue working with ShotSpotter or approve the contract with Flock. 

What is ShotSpotter doing for the Cleveland police?

More than once, council members asked whether ShotSpotter has saved any Clevelanders’ lives. The answer isn’t quite straightforward. 

The report  found 53 instances in which victims received life-saving first aid after a ShotSpotter alert. In all but one of those cases, police also received a 911 call about a shooting. But the ShotSpotter alerts came in four minutes sooner, on average, than the 911 call. 

Did those four minutes make a difference? Rachel Lovell, one of the researchers, said she couldn’t determine that without knowing more about the type of injuries that the victims suffered. 

In Safety Director Wayne Drummond’s view, those additional minutes matter. He pointed out that a person with a traumatic injury can die after just a few minutes of blood loss. 

“For me, just having the ability for our officers to receive those alerts, to respond to those areas and to do life-saving measures on those people, in my very humble opinion, is worth the investment that we’ve invested in the gunshot detection technology,” he said. 

Has ShotSpotter led to arrests and prosecutions? 

The CSU study reported 126 arrests connected to a ShotSpotter alert in 2023 and 2024. 

Because ShotSpotter is better than 911 calls at identifying the location of a shooting, it’s more likely that police will find evidence such as shell casings after a ShotSpotter alert, the study said. However, the “vast majority” of alerts do not lead to evidence collection, according to the study. 

Council Member Stephanie Howse-Jones asked how many people were eventually convicted of crimes stemming from a ShotSpotter alert. City safety officials said they didn’t have an answer because police report numbers weren’t linked to subsequent court case numbers. 

That led Howse-Jones to a broader question. 

“How are we actually even developing a crime prevention strategy if we don’t have a full analysis of the victims and perpetrators so we can actually prevent crime?” she said. 

Drummond replied that the city employs crime data analysts and uses their data when making decisions about where to deploy resources. 

A renewed focus on staffing strain

Council Member Kris Harsh’s big takeaway from the study wasn’t really about ShotSpotter at all. It was about police staffing. Cleveland saw a bigger decline in police officers between 2019 and 2024 than any other city with a force of 1,000 to 3,000 cops, the CSU study found. 

There were 1,550 officers on the force at the end of 2019, according to a city budget book. Today, there are 1,151 officers and 78 recruits, Safety Committee Chair Michael Polensek said. 

With more staff, Cleveland police would better be able to make use of ShotSpotter — such as by canvassing the neighborhood for witnesses and analyzing detection data, the study said. 

Harsh asked whether City Hall wants to continue sending short-staffed police out on ShotSpotter calls at the possible expense of lower-priority calls, such as burglar alarms or certain domestic violence reports. 

“There seems to be a much bigger problem facing safety in the city of Cleveland than just whether or not officers have the property technology to respond to it,” he said. 

Drummond said that the administration is trying to reach its budgeted police staffing number of 1,350 officers. Once the city hits that, he would plan to ask City Council to budget for a larger force, he said. 

ShotSpotter vs. Flock Safety

City officials acknowledged that they did not hold a competitive bid process before proposing a three-year, $2 million contract Flock Safety. The city already uses Flock license plate readers. 

In a summary submitted to City Council, the Bibb administration wrote that Flock was the only vendor that could offer this specific combination of sound detection, integrated video, license plate readers and data handling. 

ShotSpotter’s corporate representatives argued their own company’s case at the council hearing. Gary Bunyard, SoundThinking’s senior vice president of corporate development, told council members that the company offers more than just gunshot detectors. It also has a license plate reader product, for instance. 

He acknowledged that Cleveland police are now looking elsewhere for technology. 

“We would hope to have the opportunity to participate in that evaluation process,” he said, “and make sure everybody here is able to make a fully informed decision regarding the options, not only with Flock, other vendors and SoundThinking.” 

One phase of Cleveland’s ShotSpotter contract expired this month, and another phase will conclude in April, officials said. 

Council Member Richard Starr asked that Flock representatives speak with council at some point in the future, too. 

“We have to make sure what we do is the actual right thing to do,” he said. 

As he wrapped up the meeting, Polensek pressed on the fact that the city did not issue a request for proposals for a new gunshot detection contract. 

“There is concern within the body as we move forward — and I can tell you without any fear of contradiction — as to why the administration did not go out for an RFP,” he said. 

How do you feel about surveillance?

Council Member Rebecca Maurer said that council had to decide how comfortable it was with expanding surveillance, particularly as President Donald Trump’s administration tries to step up immigration arrests. 

She said that she had “great discomfort” with it. But she also said that residents desperate for safer neighborhoods may come to a different conclusion about surveillance. 

“It’s our responsibility to tease out whether this technology can actually deliver on the things people are so hungry for,” she said.