Some of the illegal things you listed aren't things that benefit much from a hastily dispatched response. If you want to catch people on cars or dirt bikes driving down the street, you kinda have to already be there. Also, a couple of the things you listed are nuisances, but not illegal activity in their own right.
ShotSpotters don't repel crime, let alone prevent it. They're intentionally covert, as shown in the OP, which gives credence to the notion that they aren't intended to deter criminal activity from the surrounding area. If anything, repelling/deterring crime would defeat the purpose of the technology.
At best, ShotSpotter merely detects crime, and its effectiveness in that capacity is kept a secret. The world of police tech is a knee-deep in snake oil. A bit of transparency would go a long way for ShotSpotter.
> Some of the illegal things you listed aren't things that benefit much from a hastily dispatched response. If you want to catch people on cars or dirt bikes driving down the street, you kinda have to already be there.
Yes and no. Intelligence (in the data sense of the word) can accrue usage patterns. You might not catch them that time, but you know where they'll be next time. What routes they travel. Where to focus.
If it's a live event, the police officer is not having to stand there fruitlessly questioning a witness about which direction the offender hooned off in 5 minutes ago - the system is already telling them, by tracking the relevant data.
It's a form of telemetry.
And it's also quite a disturbing (to use an overused phrase!, but which I hope is justified here) slippery slope.
ShotSpotters don't repel crime, let alone prevent it. They're intentionally covert, as shown in the OP, which gives credence to the notion that they aren't intended to deter criminal activity from the surrounding area. If anything, repelling/deterring crime would defeat the purpose of the technology.
At best, ShotSpotter merely detects crime, and its effectiveness in that capacity is kept a secret. The world of police tech is a knee-deep in snake oil. A bit of transparency would go a long way for ShotSpotter.