Federal judge sides with prosecution in dispute over ShotSpotter in Mobile

By Brendan Kirby

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    MOBILE, Alabama (WALA) — A federal judge on Monday turned away a legal challenge to an arrest made, in part, because of an alert issued by an automated gun-detection system.

Mobile police arrested Anthony Lee Jackson on Aug. 9 after a program called ShotSpotter alerted officers to gunshots in the area of Midway and Weinacker avenues near Ladd-Peebles Stadium after 11 p.m. Federal prosecutors later charged him with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.

Jackson’s attorney, Assistant Federal Defender Colin Fitzpatrick, sought to have evidence of his client’s guns thrown out on grounds that ShotSpotter “unreliable, inaccurate, and unvetted” and that it produces “a flood of false-positive reports.”

But Chief U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock ruled against Jackson, 36, after hearing testimony from three police officers about steps they took after getting the initial alert.

“I don’t see from what I have seen in this hearing that ShotSpotter is anything more than the start of a process,” the judge said.

The ruling means that an exceptionally strong case against Jackson will proceed. Fitzpatrick indicated to the judge that his client would plead guilty to the offense and take up the issue on appeal. He argued that the officers, who testified that they never saw Jackson doing anything wrong, never would have questioned him if not for the ShotSpotter alert. Allowing the police to base their actions on such a report, he said, violated Jackson’s constitutional rights to be free from illegal search and seizure.

“It is important that ShotSpotter not be allowed to color investigations like this,” he said in court.

Fitzpatrick predicted the issue would arise again in one form or another.

“These black box algorithms – we’re going to be seeing them more and more in law enforcement,” he said. “People’s rights are going to suffer. And they are suffering. … And that is scary to me. It should be scary to everybody in this courtroom.”

Fitzpatrick cited a 2021 report by the Chicago Inspector General’s Office including that ShotSpotter alerts in that city rarely led to evidence of gun-related crime and tended to change police behavior.

ShotSpotter owner stands by technology But SoundThinking, the company that owns the ShotSpotter system, stands by the technology. Tom Chittum, the firm’s senior vice president for analytics and forensic services, told FOX10 News the the system has an accuracy rate of about 97 percent. He rejected the defense contention.

“This is an argument that we see commonly made but simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny,” he said. “There’s ample evidence that shows ShotSpotter is reliable and accurate and an appropriate factor for law enforcement to use in assessing whether or not someone is engaged in criminal activity, may be carrying an illegal firearm and shooting in an urban area.”

ShotSpotter involves microphones and sensors that record sounds and an algorithm programed to isolate the sound of gunfire. Human monitors working for SoundThinking then listen to confirm the computer findings before relaying to the information to officers who carry a ShotSpotter application.

Mobile’s ShotSpotter system went live almost exactly a year ago as part on an initiative to combat rising gun crime. Police officials say it has worked, giving faster notification of gunfire. Officials have said they also believe the system has had a deterrence effect.

The officers who testified Monday all said they have found the system to be reliable, using leading police to shell casings, bullet holes, witnesses, victims or other evidence.

The officers testified that when they arrived in area of the Aug. 9 report, they said one person inside of a sedan and other person hunted over the car, near a empty truck with a running engine and an open driver’s side door.

The officers all told the judge they would have stopped to check out such a situation, even if they did not have the ShotSpotter alert, to make sure everyone was OK.

Defendant volunteered to officers he had gun Prosecutors played officer body camera footage showing Jackson almost immediately volunteering that he had a gun in his pocket. Officers quickly saw tow more guns in plain view in the truck, and Jackson admitted that the vehicle was his. He also told the officers that he had fired two shots into the ground to test a new gun, which corresponds with the ShotSpotter report of two gunshots.

It was, perhaps, the first legal challenge to ShotSpotter in Mobile, but there have been others throughout the country.

Chittum, who was a federal law enforcement officer before joining SmartThinking, said the company has a good record in the courts.

“Federal courts across the country have often found that it’s an appropriate factor for law enforcement to use and assessing whether or not they can detain and search somebody,” he said.

Other cases include:

A Milwaukee man’s appeal of a felon-in-possession of a firearm charge based on arguments that the gunshot detection system is unreliable. The Wisconsin Supreme Court last year turned aside Avan Rondell Nimmer’s appeal. Police arrested him in 2019 after they saw him about 100 feet from a ShotSpotter alert. An appeal by a man arrested after a traffic stop by Dayton police responding to a ShotSpotter alert. An Ohio appeals court last year upheld the conviction. An appeal by a man stopped in 2020 by Peoria, Illinois, police in 2018. A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction of Terrill Rickmon, ruling that the “totality of the circumstances” led officers to reasonably suspect criminal activity. The court’s chief judge, howe3ver, dissented. Also last year, a class-action lawsuit filed in federal court alleged that Chicago police misused the system and, as a result, ignored promising leads during a murder investigation. Michael Williams spent almost a year in jail based, in part, on an alert from ShotSpotter. A judge ultimately dismissed the charge at the request of prosecutors, who cited insufficient evidence.

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