Gunshots Will Play Key Role In New Worcester Crime Forecast Tool

WORCESTER, MA — Sentient gunshot sensors in select Worcester neighborhoods will provide key data for a new crime forecasting tool called ShotSpotter Connect, which was approved for use by the City Council on Tuesday.

The gunshot detectors highlight a concern by groups opposed to adopting ShotSpotter Connect: the software will concentrate police in neighborhoods where more people of color live.

The gunshot detectors, which are made by the ShotSpotter company, only cover about 8 of Worcester's 38 square miles, creating a potential data gap between neighborhoods without sensors.

"Our concern, shared with at least 19 local community and religious organizations, is that ShotSpotter and local government officials don’t understand that in cities geographic data is racial data," the group Defund WPD said Tuesday. "In a city like Worcester, with a proven pattern of biased policing, using historical crime data to drive predictions about where crime will occur puts our city’s Black, brown and poor residents at higher risk of having unnecessary run-ins with police."

Worcester police Deputy Chief Paul Saucier, who led the department to adopt Connect, said Tuesday the mix of data used by the tool is complex and comes from more than just gunshot sensors. The point of the tool is to work on whatever crime issue is affecting a particular neighborhood, be it shootings or package thefts.

"Gunshots are going to be in certain neighborhoods and not in others," Saucier said. "The officers in those areas, they're going to be there anyway. It's not like we're sending in different entities from the department just to go into one sector."

Computer-assisted policing

The Connect tool has been described as a way for police to forecast crime to better deploy resources. In Worcester, that means the tool will dispatch police to crime hot spots for short periods as a deterrent, Saucier said Tuesday.

Worcester police patrol the city across 20 different "routes" — geographic areas spread across the city. The Connect tool focuses resources on about 10 different major crimes, from shots fired to homicide, robbery, assault and more, Saucier said. But each police route will only use Connect to focus on two top crimes.

From there, Connect breaks down each route into 250 square-meter blocks. Officers will spend 15 minutes inside the blocks with the highest level of crime that's the focus of that particular route.

"[The officers] will sit in that area, they'll do community police activities, park and walk a beat, engage the community," Saucier said. "It's not out there to create a ton of arrests."

The role of gunshots

Apart from the gunshot detectors, Connect relies on local data on weather, demographics, event anniversaries and even the density of bars in a given area. It also uses crime reported by residents, which may drive policing priorities across the city's 20 patrol routes.

But it's unclear how Connect's programming blends those data sources. Saucier could not say what the mix would be, and a ShotSpotter spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment about it. Some patrol routes in Worcester will not use data from gunshot sensors because the devices are not present in every neighborhood.

Worcester police and ShotSpotter representatives have discussed gunfire data in negotiations over the tool.

"ShotSpotter Connect provides forecasts of gun crime and other selected major crime types within and outside the current ShotSpotter Flex coverage area(s) ... based on agency crime data, covariate data sources, and, for those agencies that have been using ShotSpotter Flex for at least two years, historical ShotSpotter Flex data," the contract between Worcester and ShotSpotter says (Flex is the name of ShotSpotter's gunshot detection product).

The gunshot data was also highlighted in a Dec. 21 email between Saucier and ShotSpotter sales representative Jack Pontious.

"Connect is an extension of WPDs ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology and it enables the agency to utilize our objective gunfire event alerts in creating risk forecasts while also enhancing visibility into patrol management," Pontious wrote.

This week, police Chief Steven Sargent sent City Councilors answers to questions from the public about Connect. In response to a question about the tool's algorithm, the company skipped over the gunshot piece: "ShotSpotter Connect assesses crime risk across the entire city of Worcester — not one area or demographic. This minimizes enforcement and location bias and leads to more fair and equitable community crime prevention."

Worcester began using gunshot sensors in 2014 in southeast Worcester neighborhoods like Union Hill and Main South. The sensors were recently expanded to the Bell Hill and Brittan Square neighborhoods.

One-year pilot

Worcester will use ShotSpotter Connect under a pilot program for about one year after a Council 8-3 vote on Tuesday. Worcester will also get a discount on an expansion of the gunshot detection equipment for signing up to pilot Connect. The combined cost will be about $148,000.

Councilors who supported Connect said the data will help make policing in Worcester more equitable. The technology is not widespread yet, although cities like Wilmington, N.C., Miami and Chicago are using it. The Council will get quarterly reports on how the tool is working, according to At-Large Councilor Kathleen Toomey, who chairs the Council's public safety subcommittee.

At-Large Councilor Khrystian King — one of three "no" votes along with Councilors Sean Rose and Sarai Rivera — called Connect "experimental technology" that was unproven and possibly unethical.

"It's going to make us a test-tube city," he said Tuesday.