Chicago, Police Officers Used ShotSpotter to Make Illegal Stops, Arrests, Class Action Alleges

New to ClassAction.org? Read our Newswire Disclaimer

A proposed class action lawsuit alleges Chicago and its police force have intentionally misused the ShotSpotter gunshot detection system to make scores of illegal stops and arrests. 

The 103-page complaint says that Chicago spends more than $9 million each year for the “unreliable and ineffective” gunshot detection sensors, to the detriment of primarily of Black and Latinx individuals who “live under ShotSpotter’s shadow.”  

The case, which names as defendants Chicago, police superintendent David Brown and nearly two dozen police officers, alleges the city’s use of ShotSpotter is fueling unconstitutional policing practices consistent with a long history of discriminatory police conduct. 

According to the filing, Chicago Police Department (CPD) officers are deployed roughly 100 times per day to chase down alerts of apparent gunfire generated by ShotSpotter. More than 90 percent of the time, the case says, CPD finds no indication of any gun-related incident, according to Chicago’s “own data.” The result is more than 31,600 unfounded CPD deployments each year due to ShotSpotter, or more than 87 on an average day, the lawsuit states. 

Per the case, however, ShotSpotter, “[r]emarkably … has never been tested” to determine whether it can reliably distinguish between gunshots and other loud noises, such as fireworks.

“The City’s decision to use this unreliable technology to direct massive numbers of unwarranted and highly volatile police deployments produces grave and systematic violations of Chicagoans’ constitutional and statutory rights,” the suit alleges. 

According to the case, CPD officers, using ShotSpotter to investigate “unfounded” alerts, have stopped and detained thousands of innocent Chicagoans who “happened to be near the location of an alert.” In particular, CPD officers have used ShotSpotter in the South and West sides of Chicago as “justification for aggressive police tactics,” treating residents as suspects, detaining them and searching them “just because there has supposedly been a history of ShotSpotter alerts in the area.” 

“CPD officers have even used ShotSpotter alerts as a basis to falsely accuse people of crimes,” the lawsuit alleges, claiming the defendants have also used the ineffective technology to “lay false charges” and “engage in thousands of unwarranted confrontations” with city residents.

One of the suit’s four plaintiffs is Michael Williams, a 65-year-old man who spent 11 months in the Cook County Jail after CPD officers, the complaint says, “intentionally and improperly relied on a ShotSpotter alert to falsely accuse him of murder.” 

On the evening of May 31, 2020, a young man flagged Williams down for a ride home, the suit says. A few blocks away, the case states, Williams’ passenger was shot through the open window of his car. Williams raced the injured passenger to the hospital, spoke with medical staff and gave his name and information to hospital security. 

When CPD officers came to Williams’ home weeks later to ask him about the shooting, he went to the police station voluntarily to help the police investigate who shot his passenger, the lawsuit states. 

“He would not return home for 11 months,” the filing says. 

The lawsuit says that instead of investigating the shooting, the defendants arrested Williams and determined, based on a faulty ShotSpotter report, that the fatal shot was fired inside his car. 

“The arrest was baseless,” the suit states. 

According to the complaint, CPD officers ignored the face that ShotSpotter itself warns that its alerts cannot provide the exact location of a shot. Further, they ignored the fact that ShotSpotter has provided a “wildly inaccurate” street address for the shooting, and the fact that ShotSpotter does not guarantee its system to work when a shot is fired inside a vehicle, the filing relays.

“They disregarded forensic evidence showing that the fatal gunshot did not come from a close range. They failed to investigate whether the shot came from a dark sedan, in the next lane, that crept forward slowly alongside Mr. Williams’ RAV4 and then peeled away through a red light. In short, Defendant Officers put blind faith in ShotSpotter evidence they knew or should have known was unreliable in order to falsely arrest and prosecute Mr. Williams for murder.”

Williams’ defense attorneys challenged the reliability of ShotSpotter evidence in court, but when it came time for the prosecution to vouch for the technology, the State’s Attorney’s office “balked,” the lawsuit says.

“Prosecutors abandoned the ShotSpotter evidence and dismissed the case against Mr. Williams, admitting to the judge that the office lacked any basis to continue prosecuting him,” the case provides. “Mr. Williams is now, finally, a free man.”

When CPD officers receive a ShotSpotter alert, the suit says, they rush to the apparent location, often with multiple squad cars, based on the system’s indication that someone just fired a gun, the suit states. Police officers then treat anyone in the area as a likely shooter, despite being aware that for the “overwhelming majority” of ShotSpotter alerts, no evidence of gunfire is found, the case relays.

“According to the Chicago Office of the Inspector General (‘OIG’), over a period of 18 months, CPD officers detained more than 2,400 Chicago residents after chasing down ShotSpotter alerts—or even just because of a supposed history of past ShotSpotter alerts in an area. These ShotSpotter-prompted encounters are hostile, terrifying, and unwarranted. Over a six month [sic] period in 2019, police reported using physical force against scores of unarmed Chicagoans during ShotSpotter-prompted incidents.” 

The complaint alleges Chicago’s reliance on ShotSpotter results in a misallocation of municipal resources to the detriment of people who live under the system’s footprint. Per the case, the city pays $9 million per year to ShotSpotter and even more on the thousands of hours CPD officers spend chasing down unfounded alerts. 

The suit alleges ShotSpotter “inflates gunfire statistics, thereby providing false justification for oppressive police tactics in neighborhoods under its surveillance—all of which are already overpoliced.” At the same time, the huge volume of ShotSpotter-related deployments detracts from CPD’s capacity to address 911 calls, the filing adds. 

Further, the case alleges that the harms linked to CPD’s use of ShotSpotter exist along “stark racial lines” in that nearly the entire South and West sides of the city, whose 12 police districts have the highest proportion of Black and Latinx residents and the lowest proportion of white residents, have been equipped with active ShotSpotter sensors. 

The lawsuit looks to cover all persons who have been or will be subject to an investigatory stop by Chicago Police Department officers where a recent ShotSpotter alert, or a history of ShotSpotter alerts in the area, is part of the basis for the stop, as indicated in an investigatory stop report and/or in records of ShotSpotter-initiated police incidents. 

Get class action lawsuit news sent to your inbox – sign up for ClassAction.org’s free weekly newsletter here.