KC wants to keep funding gunfire detection system. But has it reduced crime?

The Kansas City Police Department continues to request funding for a gunshot detection technology that research shows has not reduced shootings or improved case clearance rates. While the technology has not improved clearance rates or reduced shootings, research has shown that it has improved response times and evidence recovery.

The research conducted on Kansas City’s use of the technology by Eric Piza, a criminologist at Northeastern University, found that with ShotSpotter, Police Department officers are more likely to recover ballistic evidence, such as shell casings, and in some cases even firearms, in areas with the technology than in those without. From 2020 until the publication of the study in July 2024, Piza and a team of researchers analyzed 15 years of ShotSpotter data combined from Kansas City and Chicago, as part of federal grant funding from the National Institute for Justice. There were 107 homicides in Kansas City in 2012, and while that number dipped to as low as 82 homicides in 2014, the number of homicides continued to rise until a peak in 2023 at 182 homicides.

Continue reading at the Kansas City Star.