If we’re chasing crime data we need to respond quickly.” “If it moves to Parkway, we need to have ability to take the sensors out and move them as well. “If 13th and Market is hot this week, we can put the sensors in,” said Ray Hayling, deputy chief information officer. They’ve been placed in areas with high crime rates and are easily movable. SENTRI technology has been attached to 20 of them in 12 different police districts, according to the department. Hundreds of police and thousands of citizen SafeCam surveillance cameras are positioned throughout Philadelphia. “ShotSpotter’s ability is to write a lot of articles and get marketing behind it.” SENTRI’s successes and failures “It just didn’t match what we needed to do,” Mike Vidro, public safety special projects for the police department, said of ShotSpotter. Rather than get ShotSpotter, the police got SENTRI. ” The grant languished for years, and plans were reworked. This will decrease police response time, increase officer safety, and save numerous live. In 2010, Senator Bob Casey and Congressmen Chaka Fattah and Bob Brady had helped secure a grant for the Philadelphia Police “ to purchase a ShotSpotter Gunshot Location System (GLS) that calculates the position where a gun was fired and sends data to a central server accessible by law-enforcement agencies. Then police commissioner Charles Ramsey told the Inquirer the department was preparing to test a different system but didn’t identify the technology or how it worked. īy then, a $500,000 check had already been cashed. “We’re ready to get the checks out,” he said. He said he wanted a hearing quickly so a ShotSpotter pilot program could be a piece of the upcoming budget. Clarke and other Council members visited Camden last March and watched how the technology worked from the Camden Police Department’s Real-Time Tactical Operations and Information Center. Gunshot audio technology entered the Philadelphia news cycle last year, but it had nothing to do with what the police department started using. “Second floor, fourth floor problems, I’m not getting into that,” said Jones, referring to the levels of City Hall featuring City Council and the Mayor’s administration. Jones would like to know more about whether the technology has been working and, if it proves successful, would like to see more urgency with getting it in Philadelphia. “The long story short around the country,” said Shahid Buttar, director of grassroots advocacy with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “is police departments have generally procured surveillance technology absent any oversight.” If City Council members read this article, it could be the first time they’re learning anything about a technology that allows the police department to further surveil Philadelphia’s citizens. SENTRI has notably failed in other cities, including Wilmington. He and Councilman Curtis Jones introduced a resolution earlier this year to further discuss ShotSpotter and “similar crime prevention tools.” At the time this resolution was introduced, the police department’s pilot program for SENTRI had been underway for two months, and yet it wasn’t mentioned. They’ve been using a better-known technology called ShotSpotter, which adds another wrinkle to this story.Ĭity Council President Darrell Clarke and others from Council were in talks with ShotSpotter officials last year and even made a trip to Camden to better learn how it works. Camden has audio sensors and so do New York City and Washington DC. Philly has been using video technology for years but is late to the audio game. Right now, the city has 20 surveillance cameras equipped with these audio-detecting sensors, spread throughout some of Philadelphia’s highest-crime areas. More than gunshot detection, they want SENTRI to be a tool that helps them catch criminals on camera and collect data. The department has continued using the technology as part of a nine-month pilot program. It’s gotten better since then, police say. These sensors, connected to surveillance cameras and installed to help police officers answer the recurring question of “gunshot or firework,” were inundated with New Year’s Day fireworks after New Year’s Day fireworks. Philadelphia Police started using SENTRI January 1, which was not exactly the ideal day given SENTRI is a technology designed to detect the sound of gunshots.
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