ShotSpotter Acoustic Gunshot Detection, In Service Since 2006
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means
Chicago dropped the same sensors in 2024 after its Inspector General reviewed them. D.C. has run them since 2006 and never ordered that review; a 2025 investigation found MPD could not say where its sensors are.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is press reporting; no primary evaluation was located. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 9 more in Washington D.C. · 📡 Sensors & IoT guide · 📡 Data & IoT projects
MPD has run ShotSpotter acoustic sensors since 2006, six years before Chicago started, and told the Council in 2018 that they covered 17 square miles across six of the District's seven police districts. Chicago dropped the same system in September 2024 after its Inspector General reviewed it; no equivalent D.C. review could be found, and the sensors stayed, with MPD publishing quarterly alert data through mid-2026. A June 2025 investigation found MPD could not say where its sensors are, could not describe the system's benefits, and dispatches its alerts at the same low priority as traffic complaints. A 2025 meta-analysis of the technology found no significant relationship between gunshot detection and crime.
📊 Impact
MPD paid at least $5.16M to SoundThinking from 2016 onward and could produce neither a total since 2005 nor a current sensor map (Washington City Paper / Investigative Reporting Workshop, 12 June 2025). The same investigation put at least 43% of alerts in Ward 8 and about 32% in Ward 7, the other six wards about 24% combined, with virtually no sensors in the majority-White Wards 2 and 3. No evaluation of D.C.'s own deployment by the D.C. Auditor, the Office of the Inspector General or the Council was found; no D.C. confirmed-shooting rate or case-clearance figure exists in the public record.
🎓 Lesson
Chicago's exit was produced by an audit, not by the hardware. D.C. bought the same sensors and inherited the same criticisms, but never commissioned the study that would settle them — so the decisive variable is whether a city builds an evaluation, not whether it buys the technology.
Sources
Continue exploring
Compare this project
The same sensors, and the audit that decided their fate
Two cities bought the same acoustic gunshot-detection system and inherited the same criticisms. Only one of them commissioned the study that could settle the argument — and that, not the hardware, decided what happened next.
| Project | Since | Status | Outcome | Evidence | Run by | Cost | What settled it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ShotSpotter Acoustic Gunshot DetectionChicago, 🇺🇸 | 2012 | Completed | Failed | Independent | City government, Private company | ≈$53M total contract value (initially $33M for 2018-2021) | The city's own Inspector General reviewed it, the contract was allowed to lapse, and police stopped using the system in September 2024. |
| ShotSpotter Acoustic Gunshot Detection, In Service Since 2006Washington D.C., 🇺🇸 | 2006 | Live | Ongoing | Media | City government, Private company | At least $5.16M paid to SoundThinking since 2016; no current contract value or term is public | The same sensors, running since 2006 and still running: no equivalent review was ever commissioned, so nothing forced a decision. |
Explore the wider context
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “ShotSpotter Acoustic Gunshot Detection, In Service Since 2006” — Washington D.C., United States. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/washington-dc-shotspotter/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.